John Winchester's Journal
by Ms.Alysa-Winchester
Summary: Here's the story before the show began behind the eyes of John Winchester and the boys have a sister. How will the story change once you've read this. inspired by the book.
1. 1983

1983

**November 16:**

I went to Missouri, and learned the truth. And from her, I met Fletcher Gable, who gave me this book and said: "Write everything down." That's what Fletcher told me, like this new life is a school and I'll flunk out if I don't have good notes. Only if I flunk out of this school, I'll be dead. And the kids will be orphans. So I'm going to go back to where this started.

Two weeks ago, my wife was murdered. I watched her die, pinned to the ceiling of Sammy's room, blood dripping onto his cradle until he burst into flames – looking at me as she died. The week before, we were a normal family…eating dinner, going to Dean's t-ball game, buying toys for baby Sammy and Alysa. But in an instant, it all changed…I feel like I'm going crazy. Like someone ripped both my arms off, plucked my eyes out…I'm wandering around alone and lost, and I can't do anything.

Mary used to write books like this one. She said it helped her remember all the little things, about the kids, me…I wish I could read her journals, but like everything else, they're gone. Burned into nothing. She always wanted me to try writing things down. Maybe she was right, maybe it'll help me to remember, to understand. Fletcher seems to think so.

Nothing makes sense anymore…My wife is one, my children are without their mother…the things I saw that night, I remember hearing Mary scream, and I ran, but then…everything was clam, just for a second – Sammy was fine – and I was sure I had been hearing things – too many horror movie too late at night. But then there was blood, and when I looked up, my wife…

Half our house is gone, even though the fire burned for only a few hours. Most of our cloths and photos are ruined, even our safe – the safe with Mary's old diaries, the passbooks for the kids' college funds, what little jewellery we had…all gone. How could my house, my whole life, go up like that, so fast, so hot? How could my wife just burn up and disappear?

I want my wife back. Oh God, I want her back.

I thought at first that we would stay. Mike and Kate helped me take care of the boys and Alysa at first, and Julie's been great too, but I tried to tell them – tell Mike – what I think happened that night. He just looked at me, this look…like he's sure I'm crazy. He must of told Kate something too. Out of nowhere she said the next morning, I should think about seeing a shrink. How can I talk to stranger about this? I never saw a shrink for everything I went through in the Marines, and I got through that. My friends think I'm going insane. Who knows, maybe I am…

The police quit on the case as soon as they couldn't pin it on me. They don't care that she was on the ceiling, they don't care about the blood on her stomach or about any of the things I've seen since then. They want a tidy answer. Doesn't matter to them whether it's the right one. The last time I talked to them, a week after she died, they asked me the same questions they asked me the night of the fire. Where was I? How was my relationship with Mary the weeks prior to the fire. Any problems with the kids? I can tell where they're going.

Mary's uncle Jacob had a funeral for her in Illinois, where she was from. I didn't go. Why? There was nothing to bury, and I don't think I could have listened to what anyone there would have said. I've been drinking too much, trailing off in the middle of sentences. I hear things at night when I sit in Sam, Alysa and Dean's room. Everything lately feels like those instances when you remember a dream a few days after you had it, but then you can't remember if it was a dream or if it actually happened. I keep going over that night in my head…why did I ever get out of bed? I left my wife by herself to go watch TV, and she died. I'm so sorry, Mary.

Dean still hardly talks. Alysa just sits and stares at the wall, or at Sam and does not say a word. I try to make small talk, or ask if they want to go throw the baseball around. Anything to make them feel like normal kids again. They never budge from my side – or from their brother. Every morning when I wake up, Dean and Alysa are inside the crib, arms wrapped baby Sam. Like their trying to protect him from whatever is out there in the night.

Sammy cried a lot, wanting his mom. I don't know how to stop it, and part of me doesn't want to. It breaks my heart to think that soon he and Alysa won't remember her at all. I can't let her memory die.

Woke up yesterday morning with a nasty hangover…Wasn't in the mood to do much of anything, much less have a heart-to-heart with Mike, who jumped on me the second I walked into the kitchen. I guess that's his right, since it was his house, he was going in about how I have to get myself together, for the kids…but he seemed more concerned about the garage than anything else. Accusing me of phoning it in, you've barely been in to work…My wife is dead, something horrible happened to her, maybe my children are at risk too…how can I forget about all that and go to work, for God's sake?

Anyway I told him he could have it. That stopped him. "you're telling me you're gonna give up your life's work over this?" Watch me, mike. It's yours.

I walked out of the house with Mike's check in my hand. He wasn't so worried about me that he wouldn't let me go. Do I blame him? I don't know. I took the kids back to Julie's and went to the first check-cashing place I could find. Walked out with enough cash to fill the back of the car with security. Two 12-guages – Winchester 1300 pump and a Stevens 311 side-by-side. Spread of side arms – good old Browning 9 mm, .44 Desert Eagle, snub Ruger SP101, and a little pocket .22. That'll do for a start.

Haven't ever written anything this long in my life. Hope I never do again.

Went to see Missouri for the second time, and I can't explain it…it was like we'd been friends for years. She knew every detail, not just of my life, but also of me…my thoughts…fears. She was the first person who didn't look at me like I was crazy when I told her my story…she just listened, and nodded , and then she told me she believed me.

She also told me that if I wanted answers that I'd need to make a sacrifice. A blood sacrifice. So I pulled out one of my own fingernails, like I did that every day. She had a vision, and we found a bloody mess in a neighbour's house along with WE'RE COMING FOR THE CHILDREN written in blood. I don't remember anything between that and finding Sam, Alysa and Dean safe back at Julie's, thank god, but Julie…Julie was dead. Something just tore her apart. Missouri found a tooth in her body. I tried to draw it, but I can't draw. I took the kids, said goodbye, and got the hell out of Lawrence. If I never go back, it'll be too soon.

Not for Dean, though. The first thing he wanted to know was when we would go home. But we don't have a home anymore, Dean. The sooner you get used to that, the better. We don't have a home anymore until we find what killed your mother.

First stop, Eureka. Fletcher said we should start there.

**November 19:**

I'm going to try and write this down just as it happened, no matter how unbelievable. Because if I can't believe it myself – if I can't rationally write down what I saw – how is anyone else ever going to believe it?

Jacob showed up looking for the boys. I talked him into coming with me to a cemetery where I thought there might be some answers, and I got him killed. The hellhound – that's what Fletcher calls it – came out of a crypt and it tore holes in him like I haven't seen in a human being since Vietnam. The H was there. I don't know who he is, but he saved my life like I couldn't save Jacob's. But he wouldn't let me take Jacob to a hospital. He said Jacob was dying, and that whatever we were looking for, it was keeping him alive to prolong his suffering. I didn't want to believe him, but he'd been right about what happened up until then…There was nothing we could do, H said, and God help me I went along with him, and I stood there and watched while my car rolled into a quarry with Jacob dying inside.

And all H said was, "Guess you got a new car." That cold-blooded bastard. I may learn from him, but I'll never like him, and I'll never trust him. He started talking about demons. Hellhounds, demons…

I let Jacob die. Could I have saved him? Maybe not, maybe H was right. But I didn't even try. What am I becoming? I always tried to conduct myself so that if the kids asked me why I did something, I wouldn't have to lie to them. But what am I going to say if they ever ask me about their uncle Jake?

**November 20:**

I killed a man in cold blood tonight.

No. I killed a shape shifting monster tonight to protect all of the people who don't know things like that exist. But it would have looked like a man to any of those people. And Dean saw it happen.

It looked like Ichi, a hunter H took me out with. We were looking for a heeler, a kind of…something. Not a man. It attacks, kills, then springs away before anyone can react. Springheel Jack, Jack the ripper, was a heeler, according to H. But H is the same guy who had me roll Jacob into a quarry, still alive. He was going to die. I know he was going to die. But he was still alive.

And then tonight, Dean walked out of the roadhouse, right when I put the final bullet into the shape-shifter's head. And he said, Why'd you kill him, Dad?

How am I suppose to answer that? Because he wasn't a man, he was a monster who looked like a man? My boy walked out the door and saw me shoot someone in the head. Maybe I'm the monster who looks like a man.

Back up. Write everything down.

H said he was going to start showing me the ropes. There are people who hunt monsters. They have a kind of network, moving through places like Bill and Ellen's roadhouse. Bill is a hunter, and they have a little girl too, Jo. She's not much older than Alysa. The hunter's swap stories about what they've seen. They're all damaged, broken. They hate the things they hunt. I'm just like them.

Ellen's niece watched the kids while H took me and Ichi out looking for this shape-shifter. Mary, you know I would never leave the boys with strangers I couldn't trust. You know that, right? I never would.

**November 21:**

The boys and Alysa are with Pam and Bill in Elgin. I haven't spent a whole night away from them since Mary died, and I can feel it like a hook in my gut, wanting to get back to them, protect them. But H says I need to talk to Mary again, and if he can make that happen…

He goes on about demons. A demon killed his wife, he says, and just expects me to believe it. But he looks like to me is someone who let grief turn him into a monster. Whatever happened to his wife, it doesn't excuse what he's done. And I can't let myself turn into him. I'm not a hunter. I'm a husband and father who wants revenge for his wife.

Here's what I could say to Dean – Your brother and sister are too young to understand any of this, but you're beginning to. And that scares me. Since your mother died, I've seen unspeakable things, and now you've seen them and that's my fault. I feel the darkness of the road I'm travelling on now. It's not a place for you. On day you'll see – I had to leave you today…but when I'm done, I promise: the day will come when I never have to leave you again. Until then, I can only pray that you're strong enough to look after Sam and Alysa. One of us has to be.

**November 24:**

We're on the way to somewhere, He and Me, but I'm the rookie and I don't get to ask where. He says he's taking me to meet someone who's going to let me talk to Mary, but before that we need to do a couple of things.

A hunter never passes up a hunt.

Never.

This is what H says. So tonight we took on a strange kid of undead thing. H said it was a revenant, maybe? I don't know what that is. Yet. I'll find out.

People called it Doc Benton. He wanted to live forever, and when he couldn't make alchemy work, he turned to organ theft instead. He kept himself alive be replacing each of his organs, as they failed one at a time, with organs harvested by unlucky locals. According to H, this has been going on since 1816. The doc was trouble, until I took him apart with a chainsaw after H burned the corpse of his most recent victim. Lesson: burning the victim weaken the doc by depriving him of the power he had gotten from those organs. According to H, you can solve a lot of problems with gasoline and a match.

I need to learn more about revenants. I need to learn more about everything.

**November 25:**

Today, in a town called Blue Earth, Minnesota, I met a crazy priest who brought Mary to me. His name is Jim, but what he did wasn't like any church ritual I've ever seen, and I doubt he learned it in a seminary. He cut himself, and his blood turned into fire, but it didn't bur him. And the fire turned into Mary.

Mary.

She said my name. I think she said some other things too, but hearing her voice say my name again…I can't describe what that was like. But it only lasted a few seconds and then she turned into a…I don't know. Like the black shuck, a devil dog. A hellhound. It spoke to me, and said, "Soon you will come to me."

After it was gone, Jim looked at the hellhound's tooth. There are numbers on it: 1127. Mary died at 11:27, according to the police report. H and Jim agreed that the numbers were some kind of coordinate carved into the tooth, but what does it mean.

Written in blood: In olden time in the West people used to say "I put my hand and seal" on a document when signing it. In the East this was literal in some cases. The emperor of Japan in ancient days "signed" important documents by dipping his hand in blood and putting a full bloody handprint on the page. In the history of pacts with the Devil, people were suppose to sign their names in blood, though they do bear signatures of people. Blood undoubtedly stressed the seriousness of the signing. You were giving away your soul. "The Blood Is the Life."

**November 27:**

1,700 miles in 24 hours flat, me and H handing the wheel back and forth, from Blue Earth to Tempe. Fletcher Gable. He showed us a map of cemeteries – Devil's Gates, he called them. Places where demons can get through to our world. I don't know about demons, but the map was divided into sectors, and cemetery #112 in Zone 7 was in Hope, Colorado near the Four Corners.

I don't know how to explain what happened there. The Fore Inn, set on the edge of a town full of dead bodies, hallucinations…we found the inn, and there was the hellhound, the Black shuck, and it came to H like a spaniel. He said he didn't kill Mary, but he set the dog on me, and said he knew "some of the players involved." But they weren't demons, he said. I killed the dog and then H changed his whole tack. Said that everything he'd done, even siccing the dog on me, was away to get me to hunt. He said he wasn't H, he was something else in a hunter's body. A man's body. All I could think of was shooting the shape-shifter outside the roadhouse with Dean as witness. I killed H, and I burned the hotel. I'm writing this at a rest stop on I-76 outside Julesburg. I killed H, and I'll goddamn well hunt, all right. I'll hunt, and the kids will hunt, and we will find whatever killed Mary and we will send it to Hell. And on the way, we will kill ever monster and ghoul and ghost and demon and anything else. My kids will not grow up to experience what I have. They will not lose what I have lost.

_This black dog, or the divel in such a likeness(God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling upon their knees, and occupied in prayer it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a moment where they kneeled, they strangely dyed._

_England, 1577. Scorch marks left on the church door, known as Devil's Fingerprints._

**November 29:**

We're gone from Elgin. Where to, I don't know. Wherever I can learn what happen to Mary, and kill whoever did it. The hunters are out there. One of them must know something about what happened to her. I'll lead back to the roadhouse first. Bill and Ellen will let us stay for awhile. After that who knows?

Never been much for books, but then I never was much for keeping a journal, either. Things have changed. I started looking for old books like Fletcher has, like I saw some of the hunters reading at the roadhouse. I need to learn. Know your enemy. And I started digging around libraries. I'm collecting old police files, going through microfiche…looking for any fires, arsons, with similar MOs to our fire. I'm gonna find this thing that killed my wife, and when I do…God forgive me…

REAGAN SIGNS BILL ESTABLISHING KING HOLIDAY

US FORCES BEGIN EXCERISE IN WESTERN EUROPE(CODENAMED ABLE ARCHER)

FIGHTING ENDS IN GRENADA

**December 11:**

Sammy has finally started sleeping through the night, and now that Dean and Alysa share a bed with him, they're out like a light too. But ,e…I close my eyes and she's there. It always starts the same, I'm seeing her as she was that night, beautiful and happy and alive. And I'm not seeing it, I'm living it, it's like I'm there…it's so real, I know I can reach out and touch her. And so I do…I reach out…and suddenly I'm back to that night, to the blood and the fire and Mary, Mary is on the ceiling, and how did she get on the ceiling…she can't be on the ceiling…

Here's there weird part. When I wake up, sweating and panting…I swear there is something there. I can feel it, hovering over me, over my kids. It's watching, it's waiting. I think it's even mocking me…You couldn't stop this. You couldn't keep her safe. You can't keep them safe.

**December 14:**

I actually fell asleep last night…then woke up in a cold sweat five minutes later. Feeling that presence again…and thinking. I've been reading about fires, how they start, how quickly they spread…but one of the books talked about strange fires, fires with no explanations…it said that some people believe fire can be controlled by certain evil entities, beings, and used to harm people. It's crazy, the stuff of fairy tales…like fire-breathing dragons, right? But then I remembered…when I went back to Sammy's room that night, when I tried to get Mary…the fire leaped out. Leaped out at me…like it had a purpose, like it wanted to keep me away, to stop me from reaching her. Like someone was controlling it.

SHELTER OFFICALS: MORE DIFFICULT TO HOMES FOR BIG BLACK DOGS

Black Dog Tavern, Cape Cod

Led Zeppelin Song

Character in _Treasure Island_

Black Dog Inn, CO

**December 20:**

I'm beginning to understand that there's nobody else but me. Other hunters have seen things. A guy named Frank Gutierrez told me with a straight face that Route 666 is thick with devil dogs. But every hunter's got a different story, and none of them have seen exactly what I've seen. If I want answers, I'm going to have to find them myself. Been reading about black dogs. Black Shuck. Old English scucca = demon. Also known as barghest, as a death omen.

Black dogs haunt roads. Sometimes they have a headless woman with them, or are headless. To see them means you will have a death in the family. Most of the written stories are British, but I've been asking around a little. Everybody's got a black dog story: in Macon County, Tennessee; Meriden, Connecticut; Long Island, Oregon.

**December 25:**

Didn't sleep again last night. Woke up in a cold sweat and realized it was Christmas. Where's Mary? That was my thought all night, and it stayed in my mind all day. Christmas without my wife seems unreal. Our celebration was clumsy…a crooked two-foot-tall plastic tree, a bunch of junk food stuffed in the stockings, and; a pile of sports equipment for the boys…foot ball, basketball, soccer ball and a bunch of baby dolls for Alysa. My attempt to bring back some normalcy. Already dean is too big for T-ball, this year we'll be going into Little League games. Or rather I'll be going to the games. Alone.

Mary will never see Dean hit a home run. She'll never see Alysa read for the first time. She'll never get to see Sammy walk, or hear him say his first words. She won't take Dean to his first day at school, or stay up with me the first night he takes the car up. She won't keep me calm when I meet Alysa's first boyfriend. It's not right that she's not here, and that's all I could think about today. I'm so angry I can barely see straight – I want my wife back.

The police have officially declared our case closed. What a Christmas present, huh?

**December 29:**

Back at the roadhouse. We're going to stay here for a while. I can't just drive around in circles. The kids need a place they can think of as home, even if it doesn't last. And I need a place when I can learn what hunters do. The only holiday spirit I have is bloodlust. I want to kill. The last time I remember feeling like this was Vietnam. But I think we can stay here for a while to get our feet on the ground. Or I can get my feet on the ground, anyway; I don't know what it will take for the kids to feel normal again. Dean hasn't been the same since he saw me kill that shape-shifter. I don't know how to talk to him about it. He's not even five years old. Most kids his age don't even have a clear idea what death is, and he's seen it up close and personal. What do I say to him How old does he have to be before I tell him the truth?

**A/N: It's been awhile since I've written something. I hope everyone had a happy holiday. I got John Winchester's Journal by Alex Irvine for Christmas this year, and as I was getting ready to go to bed on Boxing Day, I thought about rewriting it to fit in a sister. Alysa is of my own creation. Well I hope everyone has a Happy New Year and I'll be back with the year 1984 to 2005.**


	2. 1984

1984

**January 1:**

Today a new year begins. Mary loved this time of year; she loved the idea of a fresh start for everyone. She always made a resolution, one a year, and unlike most people, she kept hers. And every year she tried to talk me into making one, but I could never see the point. I wish I could have seen her diary. Maybe it would help me remember her. Maybe it would clue me in to some of her secrets. Maybe that's the point of a diary. Keep your stories, your life, from dying. So that other people don't forget.

God I wish the kids could have known Mary longer.

This year I'm finally making a resolution. I'm going to find out what happened to my wife.

**January 24:**

Dean turns five today. I was thinking about where we're going to be in the fall, because he should start school. Then I realized that I can't leave him in a school. Anything could happen. Maybe a place that has half-day kindergarten. Maybe that I could do. I know I should. I know he should be able to run around with other kids, who don't know how to field-strip the Browning. Well, Dean doesn't know either, yet. But he's learning. He's got a talent for guns. I can see it already. And he'll need it.

**May 2:**

Sammy is a year old. We spent his birthday in the mountains, because I had to meet a guy named Daniel Elkins. The hunter culture is weird about how it breaks in new blood. Everyone you meet says you should go meet someone else, and learn something else, and every time you meet someone else they take you out to hunt their favourite kind of monster. This guy Elkins lives in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, and according to him, he's the greatest vampire hunter alive.

Vampires.

They're real. I've never seen one, but Daniel says they're real, and I believe him. He also says that the hunter's journal is for research as much as for recording day-to-day whatever. So I copied this from a book called the _Harleian Miscellany:_

_ We must not omit Observing here, that our Landlord seems to pay some regard to what Baron Valvasor has related of the Vampyres, said to infest some Parts of this County. These Vampyres are suppose to be the Bodies of deceased Persons, animated by evil Spirits, which come out of the Graves, in the Night-time, suck the Blood of many of the Living, and thereby destroy them._

Vampires, four hundred years ago. There are other records, even older. Peter Plogojewitz, the Shoemaker of Silesia…

**May 17:**

Alysa turns 3 today, and has begun to finally make the connections of why Mary is no longer with us. This would have also been our sixth anniversary. Six is iron. Sammy took his first steps yesterday. He walked toward where Dean and Alysa were playing, then fell flat on his face and started crying. Life is tough, kid. Do I sound like a proud dad? I am.

MAN CLAIMS BEAST ATTACK IN FT. COLLINS ("LIKE A GINAT BLACK DOG," HE SAYS)

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for a year. I'm never going to be over it, and I wouldn't want to be. But I've spent the last year getting better at revenge.

Maybe this is a good time to write down everything I've learned about Lawrence.

_- Corner of 8__th__ and Massachusetts: Ghost, woman in nineteenth-century dress_

_- 7__th__ and Massachusetts: Eldridge Hotel. Word is the city's going to rebuild it, so maybe the haunting will change-but Missouri says there's something about the fifth floor. She gets visions more easily there, like the spirit world is closer somehow._

_- Stull Church: abandoned 1922. No roof, but you can stand inside it in a thunderstorm and not get wet. Rain will not fall on it. A crucifix stills hangs on the wall, and it turns upside down when you approach_

_- Stull Cemetery: Devil said to appear there twice a year, on the vernal equinox and Halloween. He is visiting the grave of one of his children, born of a human witch and dead after a few days._

_- Haskell Institute: children's cemetery near Taminend Hall, full of uneasy ghosts. Another ghost, a co-ed suicide, haunts the basement of Pocahontas Hall. Hiawatha Hall full of bad echoes, the sorrow and pain of generations of abused children. How many of them died?_

I'm learning about haunting. Everyone I've talked to and read thinks they know everything

about haunting, but they all say something different. Or so vague that it doesn't mean anything. I read this and that, and tell myself that if I keep doing it, I'll start to see the patterns.

_ In the world of spirits is always a very great number of them, as being the first sort of all, in order to their examination and preparation; but there is no fixed time for their stay; for some are translated to heaven and others confined to hell soon after their arrival; whilst some continue there for weeks ,and others for several years…Ebenezer Sibly_

REPUTATION OF LAWERENCE HAUNTINGS WORLDWIDE HALLOWEEN BRINGS THRILL-SKEEKERS TO STULL

This reminded me of Doc Benton. From William of Newburgh:

_As soon as this man was left alone in this place, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for breaking his courage, incontinently roused up his own chosen vessel, who appeared to have reposed longer than usual. Having beheld this from afar, he grew stiff with terror by reason of his being along; but soon recovering his courage, and no place of refuge being at hand, he valiantly withstood the onset of the fiend, who came rushing upon him with a terrible noise, and he struck the axe which he wielded in his hand deep into his body. On receiving this wound, the monster groaned aloud, and turning his back, fled with a rapidity not at all inferior to that which he had advanced, while the admirable urged his flying foe from behind, and compelled him to seek his own tomb again; which opening of its own accord, and receiving its guest form the advance of the pursuer, immediately appeared to close again with the same facility. In the meantime, they who, impatient of the coldness of the night, had retreated to the fire ran up, through somewhat too late, and having heard what had happened, rendered needful assistance in digging up and removing from midst of the tomb the accursed corpse at the earliest dawn. When they had divested it of the clay cast forth with it, they found the huge wound it had received, and a great quantity of gore which had flowed from it in the sepulchre; and so having carried it away beyond the walls of the monastery and burnt it, they scattered the ashes to the winds._

Everyone agrees that you have to burn them to make sure they stay dead. Should have burned Doc Benton, too, but I'm guessing the chainsaw did the trick.


	3. 1985

1985

**January 1:**

New Year's Day. Mary, I promised last year that I would avenge you. I promise again. I'll promise again. I'll promise it every year until it happens. I'll never forget.

**January 24:**

Dean's sixth birthday. It's been more than a year since he saw me kill a shape-shifter. He doesn't ask about it anymore. And he stopped asking when he's going to go to school. I tried to do it last fall, but I couldn't. I just couldn't risk it. Maybe this year, now that he's a little older, since Alysa will be joining him, and now that he knows a little more about things. I've been teaching him. Not the worst stuff, but enough so he knows that there are things that go bump in the night. Soon as Alysa reaches the same age that Dean is now, she'll know, and she'll have Dean and I there for her.

_-Myling. Scandinavian child spirit, also called utburd. Typically the souls of murdered children, or children who died unbaptized. They will ride travelers at night and demand to be taken to a graveyard so they can rest, but they get heavier and heavier as the graveyard gets closer, until the person carrying them is driven under the earth by their weight. This belief is derived from the practice of leaving unwanted or deformed infants out to die of exposure. Generally they haunt the location where they were abandoned, but folklore also notes their presence in the dwellings of those who killed them – usually a family member. If their remains can be located and buried in a hallowed ground, they will disappear._

**May 2:**

Sammy is two today. Two years in a row we've spent his birthday in Colorado, where I had to stop by Daniel's. Still never seen a vampire, but Elkins is such a hermit that because I talk to him, other hunters are starting to ask me to pick his brain for them.

Crosses won't repel them, but sunlight won't kill them. They can go outside. They need blood to survive, and prefer human blood, but can survive on other mammals if there are no humans around. The only way to be sure of killing them is beheading – although the blood of a dead man is like poison to them. It won't kill them, but it weakens them, makes them slow and sick

Daniel says they're extinct, but he keeps an eye out anyway, and he thinks I should know enough about them to take one on if there are any left. He gave me a copy of this article, in case it was ever useful.

_…the body of the brother last dead was according exhumed, and "living" blood being found in the heart and in circulation, it was cremated, and the sufferer began immediately to mend and stood before me a hale, hearty and vigorous man of fifty years._

_From American Anthropologist, 1896_

**May 17:**

Alysa is four years old today, and once again Mary will not be able to take her to her first day of school, maybe it'll be easier sending Dean and Alysa off to school, now that they'll have each other. This would have been our seventh anniversary. Wool and copper.

_There lived at Baghdad an aged merchant who had grown wealthy in his business, and who had an only son to whom he was tenderly attached. He resolved to marry him to the daughter of another merchant, a girl of considerable fortune, but without any personal attractions. Abul-Hassan, the merchant's son, on being shown the portrait of the lady, requested his father delay the marriage till he could reconcile his mind to it. Instead, however, of doing this, he fell in love with another girl, the daughter of a sage, and he gave his father no peace till he consented to the marriage with the object of his affections. The old man stood out as long as he could, but finding that his son was bent on acquiring the hand of the fair Nadilla, and was equally resolute not to accept the rich and ugly lady, he did what most fathers, under such circumstances, are constrained to do, he acquiesced._

_ The wedding took place with great pomp and ceremony, and a happy honeymoon ensued, which might have been happier but for one little circumstance which led to very serious consequences._

_ Abul-Hassan noticed that his bride quitted the nuptial couch as soona s she thought her husband was asleep, and did not return to it, till an hour before dawn._

_ Filled with curiosity, Hassan one night feigned sleep, and saw his wife rise and leave the room as usual. He followed cautiously, and saw her enter a cemetery. By the strangling moonbeams he be held her go into a tomb; he stepped in after her._

_ The scene within was horrible. A party of ghouls were assembled with the spoils of graves they had violated, and were feasting on the flesh of the long-buried corpses. His own wife, who, by the way, never touched upper at home, played no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet._

_ As soon as he could safely escape, Abul-Hassan stole back to his bed._

_ He said nothing to his bride till next evening when supper was laid and she declined to eat; then he insisted on her partaking, and when she positively refused, he exclaimed wrathfully, "Yes, you keep your appetite for your feast with the ghouls!" Nadilla was silent; she turned pale and trembled, and without a word sought her bed. At midnight she , fell on her husband with her nails and teeth, tore his throat, and having opened a vain, attempted to suck his blood; but Abul-Hassan springing to his feet threw her down, and with a blow killed her. She was buried the next day._

_ Three days after, at midnight, she reappeared, attacked her husband again, and again attempted to suck his blood. He fled from her, and on the morrow opened her tomb, burned her to ashes, and cast them into the Tigris._

MUTILATED DEAD COWS FOUND ON HIGHWAY

TWO FOUND MURDERED IN BIZARRE SUICIDE PACT

REAGAN TO ADDRESS CONGRESS TODAY

**September 7: **

Today was Dean and Alysa's first day of school. I put Dean straight in first grade. He's almost seven, and I just told the school that he's been in kindergarten back in Kansas. They didn't press too hard when I told them the kids lost their mother, and we'd been moving around. I think we'll stay here for a while. Or try, anyway. I felt normal again while I was taking Dean and Alysa to school. They both asked on the way in whether the kids in school learned the same stuff they'd been learning. I had to tell them that maybe it wasn't a food idea for them to talk about Dad's job on the playground.

They came home on top of the world, and they each brought me worksheets with the names of different parts of a fish, different numbers of apples, and oranges added together…this is what it should be like. Why can't it?

Sammy wants to be in school too. I can't even imagine staying in one place for long enough that he'll start here. Two years seems like forever.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for two years. I've been on the road for three days, cleaning up a haunted building in San Francisco. Already these are starting to seem like an everyday chore to me. You get the story, you find the remains, you burn them and salt them. End of story. These were two girls, and the whole ride back to the roadhouse I was thinking that Alysa will never have a sister to play with or two side with her when the boys start to gang up on her. Dean and Alysa saw something on my face, or maybe it was just that they knew what day it is. When I got here, they came up to me and asked if I'd had tough hunt. I couldn't talk for a minute.

**November 14:**

Took Dean shooting. If he's big enough to try to comfort me, he's big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. I only let him fire the .22, but he is a deadeye marksman. My drill sergeant would have taken him over me in a second. Times like this, I sure am proud of my boy. Alysa looks like she'll be good with the tools of the trade too, but she'll probably have better knife work then either Dean or myself especially if she can cook anything like Mary was able too. I have a feeling it'll be different with Sammy. Maybe he's just too young to show it, but I don't think he's got the same kind of killer instinct that his siblings have.

_Pliny the younger, letter to Sure:  
There was at Athens a large and roomy house which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing iron, was frequently heard, which if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful night under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terror grew upon them, and death ensued. Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the house was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely inhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this very alarming circumstance a bill was put up, giving notice that it was either to be let or sold. It happened that Athenodorus the philosopher came to Athens at this time, and, reading the bill, enquired the price. The extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion; nevertheless, when he heard the whole story, he was so far from being discouraged that he was more strongly inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it grew toward evening. He ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the front part of the house, and , after calling for a light, together with his pencil and tablets, directed all of his people to retire. But that his mind might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of imaginable nary noises and spirits, he applied himself to writing with the utmost attention. The first part of the night passed in silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, he neither lifted his eyes nor laid down his pen, but in order to keep calm and collected, tried to pass the sounds off to himself as something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at least in the chamber. He looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it had been described to him: it stood before, beckoning with a finger, like a person who calls another. Athenodorus in reply made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon his papers; the ghost then rattled its chains over the head of the philosopher, who looked upon this, and seeing it beckoning as before, immediately arose, and, light in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along as if encumbered with its chains, and turning into the area of the house, suddenly vanished. Athenodorus, being thus deserted, made am mark with some grass and leaves on the spot where the spirit left him. The next day he gave information to the magistrates, and advised them to order the spot to be dug up. This was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was there; for the body, having lain a considerable time in the ground, was putrefied and was moldered away from the fetters. The bones being collected together were publically buried, and thus after the ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more._


	4. 1986

1986

**January 1:**

Happy New Year. This year, Mary, I will find out what killed you.

**January 24:**

For his seventh birthday. I took Dean shooting again. He wanted to fire one of the big guns – that's what he called them. I let him shoot the Browning, bit I steadied his hands. Sammy wanted me to help him make Dean a card, while Alysa begged me to help her make Dean a homemade cake. It was like a normal day, like we were a normal family with a mom who was off shopping or at work or something. Instead of dead. That illusion never lasts. I can't afford to let it.

_ The wicked Utukku who slays man alive on the plain.  
The wicked Al__û who covers (man) like a garment._

_ The wicked Etimmu, the wicked Gallû, whobind the body._

_ The Lamme (Lamashtu), the Lammea (Labasu) who cause disease in the body._

_ The Lil__û who wanders in the plain._

_ They have come nigh unto a suffering man on the outside._

_They have brought about a painful malady in his body._

_The curse of evil has come into his body._

_An evil goblin they have placed in his body._

_An evil bane has come into his body._

_Evil poison they have placed in his body._

_An evil malediction has come into his parts._

_Evil and trouble they have placed in his body._

_Poison and taint have come into his body._

_They have produced evil._

_Evil being, evil face, evil mouth, evil tongue._

_Sorcery venom, slaver, wicked machinations, which are produced in the body of the sick man._

_O woe for the sick man who they cause to moan like a __šqharrat-pot._

**January 29:**

RIP

Jarvis  
Resnik  
Smith  
Onizuka  
McAuliffe  
McNair  
Scobee

**April 6:**

There's a reason why they call it Devil's Gate.

We were suppose to turn Devil's Gate into a devil's Trap. But I made a mistake, and Bill died.

It's a slot canyon, used to flood all the time (Arroyo Seco isn't always _seco_) until they put in a spillway and built the reservoir. But odd things happened there. Four kids in three years, from 1957 – 1960, vanish without a trace. Other people see things. No one will talk about it. Bill was sure that something had come up through the canyon thirty years ago, and was about to again. Some kind of hellspawn. So we went there to catch it in the act and take care of it. Hellspawn, that's the word he used. I don't know if I believe in Hell. But I do remember the Black Shuck, and the way Mary's spirit was transformed in Blue Earth. That came from somewhere. Was it a demon? I don't know if I believe in demons. I've seen people who thought they were demons, and acted like demons – but how would you know the difference between a demon and a shape-shifter? How would you know?

I'm avoiding it. This is how Bill died.

At the mouth of the spillway we found this god-awful fluid trickling straight out of the concrete. Dark brown, stinking of sulphur. It burned your fingers to touch it. Bill drew a figure around it, he called it a Devil's trap from a book called the Key Of Solomon. Psalm 90:13. He used charcoal to draw the trap on the wall of the spillway around the sulphur, and then I laid it out on the ground in front of the runner, using salt. Kosher salt, no added iodides. Bill said this was important. He started watching the sky as the sun set. The first stars would tell him when the hellspawn was coming through, he said. I looked up with him, but the stars just looked like stars to me. I have so much to learn. There I was in Pasadena, the kids back at the roadhouse. I wasn't being a father. I was being a hunter. I was hunting. And while I looked up at the sky, I made a simple mistake. I didn't pay attention to where my feet were, and I scuffed the salt. Just a little. But enough that when something came out of the mouth of the tunnel, nothing stopped it.

It looked like smoke and sounded like a million flies. Bill looked down from the stars just in time for it to flow right into him. He started jerking like a condemned man in the electric chair, and two voices were coming out of his mouth. One was the thing, the hellspawn. I don't know what language it was speaking, but its voice was horrible. It was the sound cancer would make if it could talk. And Bill, he kept saying over and over again, John shoot me, shoot me, John.

So I did.

It was the worst mistake I ever made. It was careless and stupid and it got a good man killed. A husband and father, and a damned good hunter, and I don't know how I'm going to explain this to Ellen. And Jo, poor Jo. She's four years old. How am I going to tell her? I can't just let Ellen do it. I'm responsible. It was over in less than a minute, Bill Harvelle dead and me standing there with a gun in my hand listening to echo of the gunshots in the hills and the echo of that awful hellspawn voice in my head.

And to the end, Bill was teaching me. With his body dying and something inside him, he staggered over to the sulphur stinking wall and let the smoke back out – straight into the Devil's Trap on the wall. Then he took a step back, careful not to do what I did, and then he sat down and died leaning against the spillway wall under the Devil's Trap he'd drawn. He saved my life even though I took his. It was a hunter's death.

I coped the Devil's Trap, but I didn't need to. I couldn't forget it if I wanted to.

**May 2:**

Tahlequah, ok. Sammy is three years old today. We celebrated with an ice-cream cake. He was still wearing most of it when he fell asleep. Dean and Alysa are sleeping too, the three of them in the bed. The room only has one bed. I'll sleep on the floor, if I sleep at all. Some nights it's enough to watch them sleep, and know that if they start to have a nightmare I'll be right there to stop it.

**May 17:**

This would have been out eighth anniversary. Eight is bronze. Alysa is five today, she looks like a mini Mary with my hair colour, now more than ever, soon she'll be looking like her mother in every way. God help me when she gets her first boyfriend later in life, I know they'll be hell to pay if Dean and I do anything to ruin it.

**September 5: **

Dean started second grade, while Alysa started another year of kindergarten. I watch them like hawk. They make me swear that I'll take good care of Sammy before they'll go to school. God, I love those kids. I have days with Sammy while Dean is learning whatever kids learn in second grade. And Alysa does whatever kids do in Sr. Kindergarten. Sammy's a very different kid. He hasn't taken to the idea of hunting bad guys, and he's still too young to understand what it means to avenge his mother. To him, her death just means she's not her, and he doesn't remember her. For him, Mary is a word. A mother, to him is something he never had – but he's still supposed to be sad that she died. I don't think he gets it. How could he, really?

**October 30:**

I saw an exorcism today. Or something that looked like an exorcism. According to Jim, there really are demons. I don't know if I believe that – he's a pastor, so of course he does, but…demons? From Hell? Even after the things I've seen these past three years (almost), I can't quite make demons fit. But between watching what happens to bill at Devil's Gate, and what I saw today…I don't know.

Jim know I hav the journal. After he was done, and the girl was looking around like someone who'd just woken up from the worst nightmare you can imagine, he took me back to his church and had me copy down a shorter version of the Rituale Romanum exorcism ritual. Usually, he said, you don't have to read the whole thing. Most demons can't hold out that long. But he wants me to copy the whole thing just in case, But I'm not sure I can disbelieve them anymore, either.

_In the expulsion of demonic forces or energie residing in an individual, soul possession, command of one's motor abilities._

The Rituale Romanum was widely used in the mid – to late 13th century in most of eastern Europe until the church banned its use in the beginning of the 14th century. Initial studies indicate that his anti-curse was particularly helpful in ridding the individual of unwanted guests, The first part of the ritual banishes the spirit back from whence it came. Repeat the incantation as follows:

_Regna Terrae, cantata deo, _

_Psallite domino, _

_Qui vehitur per calus_

_Caelos antiques_

_Ecce, edit vocem suam, vocem potentem:_

_Akinsoscite_

_Potentiam dei!_

_Majestas ejus,_

_Et potential ejus_

_In nubibus._

_Timendus est dues e sancto suo, _

_Dues Isreal; ipse potentiam_

_Datet robur populo suo_

_Benedictus dues._

_Gloria Patri._

On the completion of the first part of the incantation the demon may take one or more of several forms ranging from liquid to gaseous to corporeal to any combination of the aforementioned. Great care must be take in performing the second part of the ritual. The demon upon expulsion can become very powerful without the need of a host. Beware that the spirit can enter a host through any opening in the host. Keep your eyes open and mouth shut.

In Michigan, they call October 30 Devil's Night.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for three years. She doesn't know that Sammy ahs learned the alphabet, and likes to catch bugs. She doesn't know Alysa loves to bake cookies with me and her brothers or loves to curl up with a book before she falls asleep; that she's do anything to keep Sammy and Dean safe, when they're with her. She doesn't seen that Dean watches his little brother and sister like a hawk every minute, with an expression on his face that says he's willing to die to keep Sammy and Alysa safe. She doesn't know how it tears me up inside to see those expressions, and to know that they're there because I have drilled into Dean and Alysa that Sammy is their responsibility. They're seven and five years old, and I've told them their brother's life is in their hands. Mary, I didn't have any right to do that. But what else could I do?


	5. 1987

1987

**January 1:**

Another New Year. Another promise. I will find it, Mary. And kill it.

Tracked down the complete Rituale Romanum, the version the exorcists like to use when they have plenty of time. Hope I'll never need it.

_Oremus Oratio i_

_ Deus, ey pater Dmini nostril jesu Christi, invoco nomen sanctum tuum, et clementiam tuam supplex exposco: ut adversus hunc, et omnem immundum spitirum, qui vexat hoc plasma tuum. Mihi auxilium praestare igneris. Per eumdem Dominum. Amen._

_Exorcismus i_

_ Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostril Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei. Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis caelorum in inferior terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestaibus impersvit. Audi ergo, et time, satana, inimice fidei, hostis generis humani, mortis adductor, vitae raptor, justitiae declinator, malorum readix, fomes vitiorm, seductor hominum, proditor gentium, incitator invidiae, origo avartiae, causa discordiae, excitatory dolorum: quid stas, et resitius, cum scias. Christum Dominum vias tuas perdere? Illum metue, qui in Isaac immolates est, in Joesph venumdatus, in sgno occisus, in homine cruces fiant in front obsessi. Recede ergo in nomine Patris eye Fillii, et Spritius Sancti: da locum Spiriti Sancto, per hoc signum sanctae Cruci Jesu Christi Domini nostril: Qui cum Patre et eodem Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen._

_Oremus Oratio ii_

_ Dues, conditor er defensor generis humani, qui hominem ad imaginem tuam formasti; respice super hunc famulum tuum (N)., qui dolis immundi spiritus appetitur, quem vetus adversaries, antiques hostis terrae, formindis horrore circumvolat, et sensum mentis humanae stupor defigit, terrore contubat, et metu trepidi timoris exagitat. Repelle, Domine, virtutem diabolic, follacesque ejus insidias amove: procul impius tentator aufugiat: sit noministui signo (in fronte) famulus tuus munitus et in animo tutus et corpora (tres cruces sequentes fiant in pectore daemoniaci). Tu pectoris hujus interna custdias. Tu viscera regas. Tu cor confirmes. In anima adverstricis potestatis tentmaent evansecant. Do, Domine, ad hanc invocationem santissimi nomini tui gratiam, ut, qui hucusque terrebat, territus aufugiat, et victus abscedat, tibique posit hic famulus tuus et corde firmatus et mete sincerus, debitum praebere famulatum. Per Dominum. Amen._

_Exorcismus ii_

_ Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostril Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei. Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis caelorum in inferior terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestaibus impersvit. Audi ergo, et time, satana, inimice fidei, hostis generis humani, mortis adductor, vitae raptor, justitiae declinator, malorum readix, fomes vitiorm, seductor hominum, proditor gentium, incitator invidiae, origo avartiae, causa discordiae, excitatory dolorum: quid stas, et resitius, cum scias. Christum Dominum vias tuas perdere? Illum metue, qui in Isaac immolates est, in Joesph venumdatus, in sgno occisus, in homine cruces fiant in front obsessi. Recede ergo in nomine Patris eye Fillii, et Spritius Sancti: da locum Spiriti Sancto, per hoc signum sanctae Cruci Jesu Christi Domini nostril: Qui cum Patre et eodem Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen._

_Oremus Oratio iii_

_Deus caeli, Dues terrae, Dues Angelorum, Dues Archangelorum, Dues Prophetarum, Dues Apostolorum, Dues Martyrum, Dues Virginum, Dues, qui prtestatem habes donare vitam post mortem, requiem pst laborem: quia non est alius Deus praetor te, nec esse poterit verus, nisi tu, Creator caeli et terrae, qui versus Rex es, et cujus regni non erit finis; humiliter majextati gloriae tuae supplico, ut hunc famulum tuum de immundis spiritibus liberare digneris. Per Christum Dominum Nostrum. Amen._

_Exorcismus iii_

_ Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostril Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei. Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis caelorum in inferior terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestaibus impersvit. Audi ergo, et time, satana, inimice fidei, hostis generis humani, mortis adductor, vitae raptor, justitiae declinator, malorum readix, fomes vitiorm, seductor hominum, proditor gentium, incitator invidiae, origo avartiae, causa discordiae, excitatory dolorum: quid stas, et resitius, cum scias. Christum Dominum vias tuas perdere? Illum metue, qui in Isaac immolates est, in Joesph venumdatus, in sgno occisus, in homine cruces fiant in front obsessi. Recede ergo in nomine Patris eye Fillii, et Spritius Sancti: da locum Spiriti Sancto, per hoc signum sanctae Cruci Jesu Christi Domini nostril: Qui cum Patre et eodem Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen._

**January 24:**

Dean turns eight today. Second grade is treating him well. I hope we can stay. He's at school, and they're going to have a little party for him. Then when he and Alysa get home, we're going to do the family things. We're going to Chuck E. Cheese's, and we'll eat pizza and play video games untilt he kids go nuts.

**May 2:**

Sammy is four today. And sure enough, we're in Colorado. That's three out of four birthdays we've been visiting Daniel. The mountains are a good place to spend early May. Maybe we should make a tradition of it – but I have a feeling that we're not in any place to start traditions. I had to pull Dean and Alysa out of schoolwhen I got a note from Ellen that someone passing through the roadhouse had just excorcised a demon that knew where we were.

I think hunters call something a demon when they don't know what it is. The word is easy to throw around. But whatever it was, if the Winchesters were on its mind, it's the enemy. So we're moving for two reasons. One, the enemy know where we are. Two, I'm going to go after where he is…as soon as I figure that out. So we're in Colorado, on our way to Texas. Dean and Alysa understand.

Sammy gets Daniel's books down from the shelves and pretends to read them. He can pick out some of the words, but what he's really after is the pictures. Like any kid his age. We stopped by here because I took out a strange kind of revenant in April, one I've never seen before. It was in Greektown, Detroit. Damiel figured it out right away.

_Vrykolkas__: Un consecrated burial, return to either murder people in the craveyard or cause problems in he house it left. Sometimes appeard as humas, other times as a sort of werewolf (although in some versions, the vrykoklas is destroyed be being dug up and eaten by a wold). Can drain the life force of the sleeper, similar to succubus/incubus or mara._

_ Stories vary widely, often incorporating elements of the poltergeist. Sometimes the vrykoklas attacks and kills people; other time its plagues their sleep; other times only children die; other times it is only waiting to be dispateched bu its surviving family members' fulfillment of a promise. Much overlap betweek vrykoklas lore and that of vampires. Not sure if one is a subspecies of the other, or if confusion in the lore obscured the real differences._

_VETALA: Hostile spirits from Indian lore, will animate corpses – their own or others – to move around. Haunt cemetaries and creations grounds. Will attack in cemetaries; can also drive people made/ Will kill children, possibly to eat, and are known to induce miscarriages. Trapped between the material world and the afterlife, can be dispelled by the performance of funeral rites. NOTE: Exorcism will not work on a vetala. They aren't demons in the sense of the Judeo-Christian ritual. If caught in the right mood, a vetala might tell yout he past and future; for this reason they're much sought after by sorcerers…mostly resulting in fatal mishaps for those sorcerers, since if caught in the wrong mood, a vetala is lethal before you know it's there. Best idea is to get on with the funeral rites and send them on their way._

**May 17: **

Alysa turns six today and me and the boys are taking her to this movie she wanted to see The Princess Bride. I highly doubt the boys will enjoy it, but we'll see. This would have been out ninth anniversary. Pottery. How is six years iron and nine pottery? I wonder if we would have had more children. Mary talked about having another girl sometime. I would have liked having another daughter to spoil.

It's summer, and we're on the move. Already I'm trying to figure out what to do about school in the fall. I'm starting to figure out that you can move a kid from school to school every month, and the schools deal with it because they have to. A part of me wonders how the kids deals with it.

But sons and daughters have to be soldiers. And soldiers adapt.

**July 13:**

From the mouths of babes…we were in Portland, Maine, because I'd heard of a Miqmaq shaman named David Fowler who lived there. I told him of my story, and he agreed to raise a Manitou and let me ask it some questions. We went down into the basement of his house and he started getting the divination ready. I'm the only white man who's ever seen it, he said, and he was only doing it for me as a favour to the other hunters he knew. He burned sacred tobacco, and some other herbs I didn't recognize. The room got more smoky than it seems like it should have. The Manitou appeared, and I got right to the point. I asked it who or what killed Mary. And then things went wrong.

I still don't know whether Fowler made a mistake, or whether a different spirit rode up into our world along with the Manitou. But whatever happened, it turned into something physical and real. Like a bear kind of. And before I could stop it, it killed Fowler. It almost killed me too, but I fought it. I don't know if I would have won, because the spirit let go of its form, animated Fowler's body, and went out through the basement window. I got the hell out of there and picked up the kids. We were almost to the New Hampshire state like and I'd told Dean and Alysa a little about that I had to talk to someone. Sammy was asleep the whole time.

Then Alysa asked me one of those killer questions that little kids come up with. "Daddy," she says. "Won' the Manitou go after other people now?"

That's a hard thing to face. Not that she asked the queston, or that she was right, but that she had a better sense of right and wrong than I did. We were back at Fowler's house an hour later, and that night I tracked him down and killed him. He was prowling around the edges of a Cub Scout camp out in a place called Bradbury Mountain. God know what would have happened if Alysa hadn't spoken up.

I came close to going completely off the rails. A almost let this quest overwhelm what I know is right, and a bunch of kids almost died because of it. A hunter never passes upa hunt, and a hunter never bails out on a hunt. That will never happen again. Never. I will not fail Mary's memeory, and I will not fail the kids.

_The miqmaq chenoo is a wintyer spirit with a heart of ice, created from a human, which wants to kill those it loves. In the period of transformation, the person who is becoming a chenoo eats snow and refuses other food. He will be ill-tempered and angry. After the transformation, the chenoo will attack and kill other members of the tribe – or anyone else. If it is killed, the body must be completely burned, or else the smallest part of it can be used to create another chenoo. Much in common with the wendigo legends found farther west. I don't know if that's the kind of spirit that caught Fowler. It was summer, I don't think so. But when I went back to his house, I took a book. I read a dead man's book. Next time I'll be ready._

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for four years. Dean asked me today what she looked like. Neither he or Alysa talk about her on any other day but this one. I couldn't even show him a picture, so I told him what you tell a boy or girl who ask about their dead mother. I told him that she was beautiful and kind and she loved him, Alysa and Sammy more than anything in the world.


	6. 1988

1988

**January 24:**

Dean turns nine today. We're on the move, so he might not finish third grade, same goes for Alysa not finishing first grade. They call themselves the New Kids all the time. They've been in three schools already this year. Who knows how many more?

**April 14:**

_Salt_

_ Symbol of permanence, incorruptibility. The word "salvation" originates from the use of salt use in sealing covenants. Jews in the Temple offered salt, still use in Sabbath rituals. Leviticus 2:13: "And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt." Lot's wife turns to salt as a reminder of permanence of errors. In II Kings, Eisha purifies a spring with salt. Jesus coined the phrase "salt of the earth" for apostles, because of their commitment. Salt used in some Catholic consecration rituals. Spilled salt should never be picked up; the bad luck is balanced by throwing salt over the shoulder at the demons who approach because of the spill. Buddhist tradition holds that salt repels all evil spirits. Throw salt over your shoulder before entering your house after attending a funeral; will prevent spirits clinging from the funeral from getting in. Salt used to purify Shinto and other traditions; Shinto myth says first landmass, Onogoro Shima, arose when salt separated from a world ocean. Native American tribes in the Southwest restricited who could eat salt. Hopi legends about the preciousness of salt held that location of salt deposits – hard to get to, dangerous to work – was a punishment from the Warrior Twins._

_ Practical uses: a line of salt is a barrier no spirit can cross. Mediums use lines to constrain movements of summoned spirits. In Japanese folklore, ghosts are packed in jars full of salt. A double-barrel load of rock salt will dispel the ectoplasmic manifestation of a spirit. When destroying a spirits permanently, salt the remains or focus of the haunting before burning. "The devil loveth no salt in his meat." Scottish fisherman used to throw salt into the ocean to blind malicious faeries._

_ In Norse myth, ancestor of the gods was born froma salt lick._

_ Dark side of salt: salt the earth after battle so that nothing will grow, no one will live ther. Can be reversed to a symbol of barenness._

_ Myth among Caribbean slaves that Africans – Igbo, in particular- can fly because they did not eat salt in their native country._

_ MUST BE RCK SALT - IODIZED SALT IMPURE, WILL NOT WORK._

**May 2:**

Sammy is five today. Thank God. He almost didn't make it.

I could blame Dean or Alysa, but it's my fault. There's enough blame to go around. I missed the kill, Alysa fell asleep making sure Sammy didn't have a bad dream, and that left Dean watching Sam and Alysa, and he couldn't pull the trigger when he needed to. I haven't taught him and Alysa well enough. If they are weak like that again, my kids will die…but what kind of father am I to put a nine-year –old boy and a six-year-old girl in a situation where they might have to kill to protect their siblings?

I'm the kind of father I have to be. I'm the kind of father who teaches his kids that no man or monster can kill their mother and get away with it. I'm the kind of father who shows them that when it comes to family, you go to the ends of the earth to put things right.

We're in Wisconsin, so we might as well skip over to Blue Earth and check in with Jim. He'll want to know about this, and maybe it'll do me good to talk to him.

_Reminder: Tell Jim about the Hausa, and African tribe whose witches keep magical stones in their stomachs. They eat their victims' souls slowly, causing the victim to waste away and die. Also, they can turn into dogs. Another African witch, sukuyadyo, or obayifo, bind victim magically and drain their blood or life force. Sukuyadyo can change their skins, hiding their real skin under a pot or mortar in their house and taking on the appearance of another. Related to skinwalker, also variations on medieval Eurpean vampire legends. Obayifo transformed into a ball of light to drain the life force. (will-o'-the-wisp.)_

_ Time for Sammy to learn how to read._

_ "Jiangshi: "Hopping corpse." Reanimated corpses out of the Chinese lore that kill living creatures to feed on the __spiritus vitae__ (qi). Possible that they are restricted to roadways, but I'm working from a story Bobby Singer told me here. Never seen one._

**May 17: **

This would have been our tenth anniversary. Tin.

Alysa is seven today, the boys pitched together and got her a bunch hair ties, that she'll need soon, her hair is growing longer and longer, and I can't give her the same treatment I give the boys. She has Mary's smile, I guess in way I still have Mary around, she's in our daughter. I'm the only one that really notices anything.

**September 28:**

_Séance:_

_On a clean altar cloth, place a small bowl filled with fresh herbs. Around the perimeter of the cloth, place black and white candles, alternating and equal in number. When all of the candles are lit, recite the following:_

_Amate spiritus obscure, te quaerimus. Te oramus, nobiscum colloquere, apud nos circita._

_At the finish of the incantation, pinch a tiny amount of frankincecse, sandalwood, or cinnamon power over one of the candle flames._

_Pythagoras also lead séances in approximately 540 B.C., using something like a Oui ji board. Using a wheeled table that moved toward signs set up ina rough circle, Pytha goras and his students Philolaus interpreted the motions as spirit signals._

_ Here Primedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while I drew my sword and dug thr trench a cubit each way. I made a drink-offering to all the dead, first with honey and milk, then wine, and thirdly with water, and I sprinkled white barely meal over the whole, praying earnestly to the poor feckless ghosts and promising them that when I got back to Ithaca I would sacrifice a barren heifer for them, the best I had, and would load the pyre with good things. I also particularly promise that Teiresias should have a black sheep to himself, the best in all my flocks. When I had prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came trooping up from Erebus – brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had killed in battle, with their armour still smirched with blood; they came from every quarter and flitting round the trench with a strange kind of screamin sound that made me turn pale with fear. When I saw them coming I told the men to be quick and flay the carcasses of the two dead sheep and make burnt offerings to them, and at the same time to repeat prayers to Hades and to Prserpine; but I sat where I was with my sword drawn and would not let the poor feckless ghosts come near the blood till Teiresias should have answered my questions_

_Katabasis: the voyage to the underworld – Orpheus looking for Eurydice. Adapted to Greek necromancy. A spirit projection of the necromancer would travel to the underworld to speak to the dead._

_Katadesmoi: A Greek curse inscribed on a lead tablet (usually). A spirit is summoned and bound to the tablet to make sure the curse is effective. Term also used for summoning and binding of a spirit to a task. Katadesmoi buried in a cemetery or sacred place to make them more effective._

_ … souls after death do as yet love their body which they left, as those sould do whose bodies want due burial or have left their bodies by violent death, and as yet wander about their carcasses in a troubled and moist spirit, being, as it were, allured by something that hath an affinity with them…_

_Necromantic conjuration from Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Seal of the Earth necessary to bring the spirit._

_ FIRST fast and praie three daies, and absteine thee from all filthinesse; go to one that is new buried, sauch a one as killed himselfe or destroied himselfe wilfullie: or else get thee promise of one that shalbe hanged,a nd let him sweare an oth to thee, after his bodie is dead, that his spirit shall come to thee, and doo thee true service, at thy commandments, in all dales, houres, and minuts. And let no persons see thy doings, but thy fellow. And about eleven a clocke in the night, go to the place where he is buried, and saie with a bold faith & heartie desire, to have the spirit come thou doost call for, thy fellow having a candle in his left hand,a nd in his right a christall stone, and saie these worlds following, the maister having a hazel wand in his right hand, and these names of God written thereupon, Tetragramaton + Adonay + Agla + Craton +Then strike three strokes on the ground and saie;_

_ Arise N. Arise N. Arise N. I conjure thee spirit N. by the resurrection of our Lord Jusu Christ, that thou doo obey to my words, and come unto me this night verelie and trulie, as thou beleevest to be saved at the daie of judgement. And, I will sweare to thee on oth, by the perill of my soule, that if thou wilt come to me and appeare to me this night, and shew me true vision in this christall stone, and fetch me the fairie Sibylia, that I may talke with hir visiblie, and she may come befor me, as the conjuration leadeth; and in so doing, I will give thee an almesse deed, and praie for thee N. to my Lord God, wherby thou maiest be restored to thy salvation at the resurrection daie, to be received as one of the elect of God, to the everlasting glorie, Amen._

_Sibly, necromantic conjuration. At the tomb or grave, after inscribing the protective circle: "By the virtue of the holy resurrection, and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee spirit of N. deceased, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distree. Arise, arise, arise, I charge and command thee."_

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead five years. We were married for five years. I feel like I'm serving a sentence sometimes, and the only way to get out of this prison is to find whoever or whatever took her way from me.

**December 5:**

Dean's teacher called to tell me that he got a subscription to the _Weekly World News_, and had it delivered to school. How is he paying for it? I could ask him, but he's already too sharp to give me a straight answer. And I could force him to, but there's no point. If that makes him feel more at home in his world…

**December 27:**

A variation, supposed to be for summoning and speaking to angels. But I've never met a hunter who believed in angels. Not even ones who have seen demons.


	7. 1989

1989

**January 24:**

Dean turns ten today. Reagan out of office. A crazy hunter told me a couple years ago that Reagan was an avatar of the Antichrist because each of his names has six letter: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan also lived at 666 St. Cloud Road.

_ Possible that original number of the Beast was 616. This is attested to in Codex Ephraimi Rescriptus. St. Jerome said 616 instead of 666. 666 a triangular number (1+2+3+4+5…  
+36), better symmetry than 616._

_ 616: area code of western Michigan – Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Traverse City._

_ Fear of the number 666: hexaosioihexekontakexaphobia _

_ Gematria: Hebrew numerology, values later transposed to other alphabets. According to gematia, commentators on Revelations give possible names of Antichrist:_

_ Lampetis = the lustrous one  
Teitan = ?  
Palaibaskanos = ancient sorcerer  
Benediktos = blue bastard  
Kakos Odegos = wicked guide  
Althes Blaberos = harmful  
Amnos Adikos = unjust lamb  
O Niketes = the conquerer  
Antemos = opponent  
Diclux = double-dealer (same as Teitan, only latin)  
Genserikos = Genseris, Vandal who sacked Rome?  
Arnodymy = I deny  
Acxyme = ?_

**May 2:**

Sammy is six years old today. He'll start kindergarten in the fall. Wherever we are. He's such a different kid than Dean and Alysa. Quiet, watchful. He's learned that there are things to fear in the world, but where Dean and Alysa want to fight them, you get the sense that Sammy, watches, learns. He's figuring something out. But when Sammy does ask a question, it's a good one.

**May 17: **

This would have been our eleventh anniversary. Steel.

Alysa turns eight today. Things are getting tougher between her and Dean, she's constantly trying to get him to leave her alone, but he won't. Guess that's what big brothers are for, but I just hope he gets over it, before Alysa gets her first boyfriend, and that'll the day all us Winchester males will be regretting.

**July 4:**

This is how you spend your holiday weekends when you're a hunter.

I got Sammy, Alysa and Dean into a day camp not too far from Blue Earth, so I could consult with Pastor Jim about a few things while the kids got to be regular kids for a while. Should have known that not even summer camp could be normal for the Winchesters. On the fifth day of the camp, Alysa was canoeing through an easy rapids on the Blue Earth river. Things went bad. Alysa swore to me when she came back that she'd seen something – only she said "someone" – capsize the canoe. I didn't think about it too much…until the next week, when another canoe went over and the counsellor paddling it died. I spent a couple days looking it, and ran across a Cree legend about humanoid tricksters called mannegishi. They live in river rapids and like to tip canoes, but they usually don't get malevolent unless the locals do something to make them angry. So what was it?

Turns out the camp is expanding, and part of the work involved blasting some riverside rock formations that used to have pictographs showing the Cree's reverence for the little bastards. The mannegishi didn't like having those gone, and started to take it out on the campers.

I'd have killed every one for them for coming after Alysa, but the truth is they had a right o be mad. So I kept my head and got Jim to put me in touch with a Cree medicine man who lived in South Dakota. I complained about the distance, and Jim told me to shut up and be happy I didn't have to go to Montana or Saskatchewan, where most of the Cree live now. The medicine man called him Joey Tall Pine, which I figured is a moniker he took on for the tourists, but after the last six years, I'm the last guy in the world who gets to complain about someone using an alias. I gave him a ride back to Blue earth and we went down to the rapids that night (now two days ago). He talked things over with the mannegishi, and they struck a bargain. They'd stop going after kids at the camp if Joey redid some of the pictographs somewhere and guaranteed that they wouldn't be destroyed. Jim stepped in and said, hey, I don't have nearly enough aquatic tricksters in the creek behind my house. Presto – mannegishi in Jim's creek, and Joey Tall Pine got to exercise his pictograph talent.

Part of me still wants to kill them, because of what happened to Alysa, but when I take a minute to cool off I realize it's the camp fault. Some day camp, wrecking pictographs so they can expand their boat launch. The kids are going someplace else next week, for as long as we can stay.

Anyway it's over now. Fireworks going off, I've got a couple of beers with me, the kids are asleep in a tent out in Jim's backyard. For the moment, the battle pauses. Mary, I can't fight every minute.

**August 18:**

Other water spirits I've read up on:

Vodyanoy. Russian male water spirit, sometimes said to be a shape-shifter but more often appears as an old man, skin freckled with scales, a green beard tangled with muck and underwater plants. May live in whirlpools. In larger bodies of water, often lives in sunken ships, served by the drowned ghosts of the ships' crew. Drowns people to serve him as slaves, but also protects fishermen who appease him by giving him the first fish of their catch. Likes butter and tobacco

Also like the rusalka, and often either marries one or takes several as servants or concubines. Rusalki are spirits of women who are murdered or die by suicide in water – sometimes children who are drowned by their mother. (See Woman in White.) The adult versions sing to seduce passerby or sailors, then draw rhwm underwater to become their spirit lovers. Lore sometimes suggest vampiric qualities. Some rusalki will vanish if their deaths are avenged. Can also be dispelled if kept out of water long enough for her hair to dry completely. The child versions can be dispelled by baptism with holy water.

Have heard of vodyanoy from hunters in Alaska. Nevre seen one. Shoshone legends from Wyoming tell of Water Ghost Woman, who beguiles hunters and travelers with sexual attraction, also shoots them with spirit arrows.

The Germanic Nix, combines attributes of vodyanoy and rusalk. In human form, the Nix is usually male and handomse and dangerous to unmarried women and unbaptized children. Most active at summer and winter solstice (christinaized versions of the legend say Christmas Eve). Plays music to beguile its target. Also an omen of drowning – similar to banshee – can be heard screaming from the water, signalling that someone is going to drown there. Like vodyanoy, the Nix likes tobacco, and also vodka. Can be made to appear by dripping blood into water, or by sacrificing a black animal/

Once, in Pinckney, Michigan, I suckered a Nix by using a Black shuck as the sacrifice. That was a show, a demon dog tangling with a water spirit. The Shuck won, and I sent it back to Hell for its trouble.

Sometimes the Nix appears as a horse called Bäckahästen, which, if ridden, will leap into the nearest body of water, drowning the rider. Overlap here with Celtic/Scottish stories of the kelpie and each uisge. Kelpies appear from the fog near rivers, and, if riden, drown their riders. The each uisge can be ridden safely as long as it see or smell water. The minute it does, it drags the rider in and devours him, leaving only the liver.

This last detail I thought was just storyteller's elaboration until I tangled with an each uisge at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts. That one took human form, too, and looked like a hansome young man who always had weeds in his hair. I was lucky to get out with my liver,

I used to like swimming, but that's one more thing I lost to the job. Water spirits don't need much water, either. See British legends of Jenny Greenteeth or Peg-o'-the-Well/ Egyptian El Nadaha ("the caller") lures children into canals to drown them.

Also have heard from other hunters about a hundred old racetrack in Goshen, NY/ A horse and rider who drowned after the turn of the century come back and ride across the lake, sometime chasing or threatening people in the area. Bäckahästen, sounds like? But I haven't seen anywhere else that a human could be transformed into one.

**November 2: **

Mary has been dead for six years. Today I overheard the kids talking about her, about her death. Sammy's old enough now to be asking hard questions, and I think that's making Dean and Alysa think about some things that they'd put away until now. They're tough little kids, Dean and Alysa. Like me. But Dean's also like me in the way he holds things in. Now their little brother is asking them things and they've got to figure out a way to protect Sammy while Sammy's question put them through the emotional wringer all over again. And what do I do? They were talking to each other. If I butt in, they'll clam up. They've got the kid bond, the kind that keeps adults out. They'd tell me what I wanted to hear, but the truth is I can't get at the real way they feel about their mother, because I can't let them get at my feelings. It kills me every day. There's no way to tell them that. We have to go on and find whatever killed their mother, my wife. Mary.

For the kids' sake, I'm going to try and stay in one place for longer. Keep the hunting trips to a few hours' drive. At least until I have a firmer lead on what killed Mary. Then all bets are off.

**A/N: Got a bit of John being an over-protective daddy, to his little girl this chapter. Anybody else think, that when Alysa gets her first boyfriend, Dean and John won't react very well. I can pretty much tell you now that when Dean turns 18, Alysa won't be happy about it at all.**

**Tehe, you'll find out in like 7 more chapters why.**


	8. 1990

1990

1 Day: Yain Night: Beron

2 Day: Janor Night: Barol

3 Day: Nasnia Night: Thami

4 Day: Salla Night: Athar

5 Day: Sadedali Night: Methon

6 Day: Thamur Night: Rana

7 Day: Ourer Night: Netos

8 Day: Thamic Night: Tafrac

9 Day: Neron Night: Sassur

10 Day: Jayon Night: Agle

11 Day: Abai Night: Calerva

12 Day: Natalon Night: Salam

_Spring: Caracasa, Core, Amatiel, Commissoros_

_Summer: Gargatel, Tariel. Gaviel_

_Fall: Tarquam, Guabarel_

_Winter: Amabael, Cetarari_

**January 24:**

Dean turns eleven today. He asked for his own gun, and I got him on. A Seecamp LWS .32 automatic, the smallest gun I could find that offered any kind of stopping power. Dean and I poured silver slugs for it ourselves, and we loaded it with alternating silver and Winchester hollow-points. He's got it in his pocket now.

**May 2:**

Sammy is seven today. I think we're going to get through the first grade this year. He's a smart little kid, but we've moved around so much that he's a little behind in school. And I haven't been doing the stuff I need to do with him on that front. I need to be better about reading to him – stuff other than field manuals and weird newspaper headlines. He's okay at math, and he knows some scientific stuff, because he's seen people doing some weird experiments at the roadhouse and Pastor Jim's, but he needs your basic little kid school stuff. I'd ask Dean or Alysa to do it, but there's only so much you can pile on two kids. Having Sammy's life as well as the others in their hands is enough for Dean and Alysa; they can't be responsible for home-schooling Sammy too. God this is one more time I'm reminded how much we need Mary.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twelfth anniversary. Silk.

Alysa is nine today, already she's noticing how much testosterone is around her, and I wish I had a female role model for her, especially with all that she'll be going through in the next few years. Lord help me, when it comes to that time of month for her…wait no, she'll never yell at me, poor poor Dean and Sammy.

**October 3:**

_Winstedt – __Shaman, Saiva, and Sufi:_

_ Sir Frank Swettenham has described how a spirit raising séance was conducted by a royal female shaman during the illness of a ruler of Perak some thirty years ago. The magician, dressed like a man, sat with veiled head before a taper, in her right hand a sheaf of grass cut Square at tap and bottom. This sheaf she took convulsively. The taper flared, a signal that the spirit invoked was entering the candle. The magician, now supposed to be in a trance, bowed to the tapper "and to each male member of the reigning family present!" After many spirits had been invoked, the sick raja was brought out and seated on a sixteen-sided stand (an improvement on the double pentacle called Soloman's seat) to await, with shrouded head and a square bunch of grass in his hand, the advent of the spirits of the state. Conducted back to bed, His Higness fell later into a swoon attributed to possession by those spirits! At this royal séance the magician's daughter led an orchestra of "five or six girls holding native drums, instruments with a skin stretched over one side on;y" and beaten with the fingers._

_ In an accountant of yet another sin Selangor, where to cure an ailment the magician became possessed by the tiger-spirit, it is aid that the ceremony usually took place on three rights and that the same odd number of persons should be present each time. For the reception of the spirit an artificial bouquet of flowers, doves and centipedes, all made of palm-leaf, was prepared. After an innovation the magician bathed himself in incense, suffered spasmodic convulsions, spoke a spirit language, became possessed, sat with shrouded head, lit tapers on the edges of three jars of water, and rubbed the patient with a bezoar stone. Then donning a white coat and head-cloth, he fumigated a dagger, dropped silver coins into the three jars, and gazed to see their position under the three tapers, declaring that it indicated the gravity of the patient's illness. Scattering handfuls of charmed rice round the jars. He put into them improvised bouquets of areca-palm blossom, and plunged his dagger into each bouquet to dispel lurking spirits of evil. Another sheaf of palm-blossom he anointed with oil and used for stroking the patient from head to heel. Next he was possessed by the tiger-spirit, scratched, growled, and licked the naked body of the patient. He drew blood from his own arm with point of his dagger and fenced with his invisible spirit foe. Once more he stroked the patient with the sheaf of blossom and with his hands. Again he stabbed the bouquets, stroked the patient, and after lying still for an interval recovered consciousness._

**November 2: **

Mary has been dead for seven years.

Psychopomp. Term for god or entity responsible for guiding souls to the afterlife. In Greece, Hermes. In Norse myth, the Vlkyries. In Egypt, Anubis. Voodoo traditions, going back to their African roots, offer the Ghede. Irish, Ankou. In most shamanic traditions, the shaman is a sort of psychopomp both at the beginning of life and at the end. He or she was present at birth to usher the child into the world, and present at death to see the soul on its journey. Medieval legends of the scythe-bearing Grim Reaper perhaps connected to practice in some parts of Europe whereby the dead were stabbed or buried with sickles. The real reapers are purely psychic entities, with power over time and perception. They can change the way a human sees his surroundings, and change their own appearance, usually to ease the transition from life into death. The reaper's true form is hard to pin down, but most accounts suggest that the natural way for a living person to see a reaper is as a wraith-like figure wearing tattered winding sheets or burial cloth.

Black dogs are also psychopomps sometimes. Buried in the foundations of churches to guard and protect the gates between here and the afterlife.

**December 25:**

Battled a nasty little bugger today. Kicked the beast back to wherever it came from. But as I looked into that stinking mouth, I wondered for the hundredth time: when's my time gonna come? And if something happened to me who'll take care of the kids? Dean tries to be the big man a lot, but he's not even twelve. Alysa is the one who looks like she feels like she's on top of the world, but when you truly look at her, you can tell she feels like she's small and insignificant. And Sammy's just seven. Just trying to do this without you is hard enough, Mary…Mary…

Mary…

Focus. The Beats of Bray Road. It's the Black Shuck and the hellhound all over again. Where do these black dogs come from? Agrippa had a black dog, said to be his familiar – he freed it from his deathbed and it trotted outside, never to be seen again. If you can believe anything anyone says about Agrippa. Even Churchill called his depression his black dog. What was really getting to him? He maybe needed a hunter around.

Some Christmas.

**A/N: Anyone watch the People's Choice Awards last night….???? SUPERNATURAL WON AN AWARD. SPN won the award ****Favourite****Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show. YAY!!!**


	9. 1991

1991

_DIDA'LATLI' 'T__Ï (To Destroy Life)_

_Sgë! Nâ'gwa ts__ûdantâ'gï tegû'nyatawâ'ilateli'ga. Iyustï (O O) tsilastû' ' lï Iyu'stï(O O) ditsadâ. Tsûwatsi'la elawi 'nï tsidâ'hïstani'ga. Tsûdantâgï elawi 'nï tisdâ'hïstani'g. Nû'nya gû'nnage gûnya'tlûntani'ga. A'nûwa'gï gû'nnage'gûnyû't;ûntani'ga. Sûn'talu'ga gû'nanugâ'istï nige'sûnna. Usûhi'yï nûnnnâ'hï. Tsûtû'neli'ga. Elawâ'tï asa'halagï'a'dûnni'ga. Usïnuli'yu Usûhi'yï gûltsâ'të digû'nnagesta'yï, elawâ'tï gû'nnage tidâ'hïstï wa'yanu'galûnsti'ga. Gûne'sa gû'nage sûntalu'ga gû'nnage gayu'tlûntani'ga. Usû'hita anatnis'se'tï, ayâ'lâtsi'sestï tsûdantâ'gï, tsû'nanugâ'istï nige'sûnna. Sgë!_

_Mooney, Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee:_

_When the shaman wishes to destroy the life of another, either for his purposes or for hire, heceals himself near the trail along which the victim is likely to pass. When the doomed man appears the shaman waits until he has gone by and then follows him secretly until he chances to spit upon the ground. On coming up to the spot the shaman collects upon the end of a stick a little of the dust thus moistened with the victim's spittle. The possession of the man's spittle gives him power over the life of the man himself. Many ailments are said by the doctors to be due to the fact that some enemy has by this means "changed the spittle" of the patient and caused it to breed animals or sprout corn in the sick man's body. In the love charms also the lover always figuratively "takes the spittle" of the girl in order to fix her affections upon himself. The same idea in regard to spittle is found in European folk medicine._

_The shaman then puts the clay thus moistened into a tube consisting of a joint of the Kaesâ'la or wild parsnip, a poisonous plant of considerable importance in life-conjuring ceremonies. He also puts into the tube seven earthworms beaten into a paste, and several splinters from a tree which has been struck by lightning. The idea in regard to the worms is not quite clear, but it may be that they are expected to devour the soul of the victim, as earthworms are suppose to feed upon dead bodies, or perhaps it is thought that from their burrowing habits they may serve to hollow out a grave for the soul under the earth, the quarter to which the shaman consigns it. In other similar ceremonies the dirt-dauber wasp or stinging ant is buried in the same manner in order that it may kill the soul, as these are said to kill other powerful insects by their poisonous sting or bite. The wood of a s tree struck by lightning is also a potent spell for both good and evil and is used in many formulas of various kinds._

_Having prepared the tube, the shaman goes into the forest, to a tree which has been struck by lightning. At its base he digs a hole, in the bottom oh which he puts a large yellow stone slab. He then puts in the tube, together with seven yellow pebbles, fills in the earth, and finally builds a fire over the spot to destroy all traces of his work. The yellow stones are probably chosen as the next best substitute for black stones, which are not always easy to find. The formula mentions "black rock," black being the emblem of death, while yellow typifies trouble. The shaman and his employer fast until after the ceremony._

_If the ceremony has been properly carried out, the victim becomes blue, that is he feels the effects in himself at once, and , unless he employs the countercharms of some more powerful shaman, his soul begins to shrivel up and dwindle, and within seven days he is dead._

**January 3:**

Something new yesterday. I took out a nest of succubi – at least that's what everyone I talked to says they are. Sexually predatory, voracious demons. They can change their appearance, and they all transformed to look like Mary at one point. God help me, I was weak. It was like seeing her there again, in the flesh, and I let myself believe for just a minute. Or not believe really. I agreed to their deception. And then, when I'd gotten my head straight again, I killed them. All of them. Was going to stay here for awhile, but I think we'll need to be on our way. I'm going to stay in the wast. Maybe New Mexico next, so we would be close to Daniel. I'm learning a lot from him, even though I've still never seen a vampire.

Succubi exist across would mythologies. Judeo-Christian versions have them as female demons who harvest semen that incubi(male version) then use to impregnate women with children who are more readily possessed by demons – or who are more likely to become witches. Birth defects were also said to be the result of incubi. A parallel Eurpoean traidition, of the night-mare, is a creature which rides the sleeper, partially suffocating him and at the same time causing sexual dreams. The four succubi name in Zohar are Naamad, Lilith, Elsheth Zenunim and Agrat Bat Mahlat. Naamah was regarded as the inventor of divination, and in some traditions as a patron spirit of music.

In certain strains of Hebrew myth, incubi and succuni are generally called lilin and Lilith. They are said to be the children of Lilith, and to die at any rate of one hundred per day because she would not come back to Adam. They can prey on children – boys until circumcision at eight days and girls for twenty days – but also attack women by causing infertility and difficult births, even miscarriages. Men become victims of the Lilith by being ridden at night, the seed being used to create more demonic children.

An amulet inscribed with the initials of the three Magi – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar – is said to protect children from lilin and Lilith.

Other traditions include Greek empusa, which attacked travelers but also drained their life force through intercourse and Turkish Al Basi (which also kidnaps horses). Martin Luther referred to Melusine as a succubus, but she doesn't seem to fir the mold; Melusine is more of a swan-maiden/selkie/kitsune typer.

The succubi I killed said something about having plans for the Winchesters. Guess they'll have to cancel those plans.

**January 24:**

Dean turns twelve today. School has started again, but we're going to move on. Next week, the Winchesters are going to be residents of Albuquerque. Dean's going to be a normal sixth grader, and Alysa will be a normal fourth grader for at least the next couple of months. Dean even talked about wanting to play baseball this spring, and Alysa was even mentioning that she wanted to start learning how to dance, but I'm not sure they're serious. I think they're taking their cues from me, talking about everyday stuff when I try to keep us in one place. Then when we're on the road again, all they can talk about is hunting.

**March 17:**

In the last week, Sammy has played a sunbeam in the school play and I killed a demon inhabiting the body of an old woman. It knew something about the succubi, I think. We're being followed. Or are we? Am I getting paranoid? I have every reason to be, but it's something I have to guard against. The kids are doing well. Sammy's talking about doing a science project to enter in the science fair next month. He's really taken to his teacher, Ms. Lyle, and she's encouraging him. Smart kid, Sammy. It was warm today, and the kids kicked a soccer ball around. That's one of the nice things about Albuquerque. I picked up a job working construction. Feels good to be punching a clock, again, actually. The regular rhythm of it. Part of me needs that. I thought about going back to turning wrenches, but it didn't feel right. I think a lot of things died in Lawrence, and that dream was one of them.

**April 1:**

Monday, I walked away from another job, and my younger son almost was kidnapped by some kind of demon. Sammy qualified for the New Mexico Science Fair, and his teacher, Ms. Lyle said she'd take him. Only she started to take him somewhere else, but I caught up to her at a crossroads. She would have killed me, and taken Sammy, but Dean and Alysa came through. I don't have any words for how proud I am of them. Their brother's under some kind of spell, there's a giant monster made out of train parts coming after me, and they have the presence of mind to find this journal and read the exorcism out of it. I almost lost all my kids today. Ms. Lyle, or the thing calling itself Ms. Lyle, wanted Sammy for something. It reminds me of the variant stories about succubi/lamiae taking children, or killing children. And if I'm honest with myself, I have to take that train of thought all the way: the stories also say that succubi come to claim the children that have been fathered by incubi, which is ridiculous.

I still don't know what Ms. Lyle wanted. She just said Sam was special.

We're on the road again. How am I going to explain to Sammy that we're not going back to school? How am I going to explain Ms. Lyle?

To top it all off, I had to give Sammy a sharp lecture on not talking to strangers. While I was on the phone with Bobby, he just got out of the car and went up to a black Seville. I read him the riot act – Dean and Alysa too, since they let it happen and it's their job to watch Sammy. All Sammy would say it was that guy wanted to know where we were going.

**April 7:**

In Sioux Falls to meet Bobby, kids along since it's not safe for them to be in Albuquerque anymore. Between the two of us, Bobby and I hashed out what's been going on with Ms. Lyle and the others. Bobby thinks I'm a fool for not wanting to believe that demons really exist, and he's not shy about telling me. Probably he's right. All the signs were there with Ms. Lyle. But if you buys demons, you have to buy hell, and if you buy Hell, you have to buy Satan, which means you have to buy God, right? I can't sign on to one belief if it means I have to take on others. Only Bobby says that he's never run across a demon who's laid eyes on the Devil. Most demons apparently don't even believe he exists. The way Bobby put it is that demons are a lot like us where belief is concerned. I don't see it that way. If demons exist, they are nothing like us.

But I guess I think they do exist. And I think Ms. Lyle was one. I was in bed with her…that thing…and it was a demon. I let it trick me away from the mission. I let myself be led, I let myself be convinced that everything can be normal again, and it was all a tactic. She wanted something from me, and she thought she knew how to get it.

And she was almost right. I've been lonely since Mary…I wanted to be touched. Just contact. And looking back, it makes me sick.

Have been reading up on crossroads out of Bobby's library. There's a universal folk-magic tradition that crossroads are gateways between worlds. Robert Johnson: "I went to the crossroads/trying to flag a ride." And then he writes "Hellhound on My Trail," too. Wonder if he knew something…plenty of stories that he sold his soul to the Devil, but people have been saying that about musicians since medieval times. Another medieval note: criminals and suicides used to be buried at crossroads. A sacrifice to the spirits that used those gateways?

Papa Legba in voodoo magic is the loa of crossroads. You go to him if you want to talk to the iwa, the gods (going back to Yoruba traditions). He is the gatekeeper, also perhaps a psychopomp – like Eshu (sometimes called Ellegua in the Yoruba/Lukumi, later Exu in Brazilian folk magic). Eshu is the patron of travellers, god of crossroads. He's also a trickster, sometimes a cruel one. Both Eshu and Papa Legba must be the first of any spirits invoked if a magical or divination ritual is going to work. His symbol, called a veve.

Veve is inscribed on the floor in some kind of powder. It can be anything from flour to gunpowder, depending on the ceremony. Hoodoo traditions prescribe certain actions at crossroads to gain gifts in music, love, or power. Or money.

**April 18:**

Went to see Silas last night. He's an old friend of Bobby's some kind of soothsayer who sells tired. I went to his place and his daughter told me he's been in a coma…since last November 2, the seventh anniversary of Mary's death. When I went to see him at the hospital, he snapped out of it long enough to tell me a couple of things I didn't want to hear.

One, he thinks that Sammy's special somehow.

Two, Dean and I need to be ready "for what's to come".

Three, Alysa will be the one to end the "final battle".

Then he was gone again, out cold. What the hell does it mean? Why Sammy? What does he have to do with any of this? What is coming? And what is this "final battle" that Alysa is suppose to end? Silas either couldn't say anything else or wouldn't. He said I brought him out of his coma, and then he was gone back into it.

Tomorrow I'm going to leave Sammy with Bobby so I can take Dean and Alysa deer hunting. It's out of season, but the Dakotas are lousy with deer and Dean and Alysa need to pull some triggers to sharpen them up. Also I need to think about Sammy. Why was Ms. Lyle so interested in him?

More voodoo. The houngan (man) or mambo (woman) is the priest. You need them to talk to the loas, also called orisha (loas also known as iwa – African and New World terminologies mix freely). Orisha are said to be beings who manifest aspects of the natural world, and aspects of a nameless god. So they straddle the physical and spirit worlds. The bokor is a magician-priest who can do both divination/séance magic and darker magic: hexes, charms, etc. They're usually for hire. Bobby says that it's possible to be both houngan and bokor. Bokor are the ones who make zombies.

Ogun is the loa (or maybe iwa, or orisha?) of iron, smithy, hunting, fire, etc. He's a warrior.

I've been hearing about a magical gun. The story goes that Samuel Colt one Halloween night made a gun and thirteen bullets that could kill anything. Wonder if that gun exists, or if it's just a hunter legend. And if it exists, I wonder where it is…Ogun would know. Tomorrow, after Dean, Alysa and I go hunting, might be fine to ask him. Go to New Orleans? Must be a bokor down there who could do a hunter a favour.

Baron Samedi, loa of the dead, stands at crossroads. Also loa of sex, known for his course appetites. Eros and Thanatos, all in one, dressed in tux and top hat. If you want to talk to him, bring plenty of booze and tobacco.

Maman Brigitte, Baron Samedi's wife, vulgar like her husband, likes to drink hot peppers. Protects gravestones if they are sanctified to her. She and Baron Samedi are related to the Ghede, a family of spirts that have to do with cemetaries, funerals, death, etc. Different traditions spell out the relationship differently. Either Samedi is a Ghede, or he created them or brought them to life, or he is an aspect of them and they speak through him.

I have to sleep. Up early tomorrow.

**April 19:**

The hunting trip was nearly a disaster. Dean missed his shot. I sent him after the buck, a beautiful twelve-pointer, and he dropped the gun when he tripped on the trail. Then out of nowhere comes Sammy, who picks up the gun and lays that big boy out. A seven-year-old…well, almost eight. Alysa shot herself a buck almost the same size, without any problems. Why do I have the feeling she's going to be the one to give Sammy and Dean the most trouble when they're older, especially when it comes to boys?

Then Sammy tells me that he thought the deer had taken Dean's gun, and that Sammy had to protect him.

It's moments like those that kill me. I taught him that, Dean and Alysa too. I taught them that everything should be seen as a threat. And now Sammy sees a deer and thinks it's trying to hurt his brother.

God.

Things got worse from there because Sammy told me he'd gotten up, wanting to come after me, Alysa and Dean, and found the man in the black Seville outside Bobby's house. He rode in the Seville to the trailhead, and found us from there. I don't know how to get my head around that. I feel like I should punish him somehow, but the truth is I should be punishing myself.

We get home, and Bobby tells me to go see Silas again. I didn't want to do it, but when I got to his house, there he was, awake and standing in his front door like he'd never been sick in his life. I don't know how to explain it. He said again that Sammy was special, and he wanted some time to talk to Sam and understand what was happening. So Dean. Alysa and I left for an hour, and on the way back I saw the Seville.

When I got to Silas' place, there was Sammy, sitting on the porch. He said he and Silas talked for awhile. I went inside, left Dean and Alysa out with their brother to catch up. Inside…I've never seen anything like it. Or if I have, it was after an artillery strike in Nam. Silas was just in pieces, little bits of him stuck to the wall and floor. Scrawled in blood on the kitchen cabinets, the words KILL HIM.

Now I've got to find the sonofabitch that killed Silas, too.

**April 20:**

Been on the run, running harder even than usual. The driver of the Seville called himself Anderson, said he was a hunter…and he was hunting Sam. He said Sam had killed Silas, but there's no way that can be true. No little boy could have done what I saw in there. But Anderson wouldn't listen, and now in the last twenty-four hours I've committed kidnapping, grand-theft auto (well, semi), and murder. That's five hunters I've killed, if you count H – but who really knows what he was? And I don't know that Anderson was what he said he was either. He passed up two chances to take Sammy out. I didn't give him a third. And I didn't give any of three Dowry brothers a chance at all.

It was Dean and Alysa who killed Anderson. My eldest children are blooded. All I ever write about is death. Because all I ever see is death, and you know what? I did that to myself. It's got to end, but it can't end until I settle what happened to Mary.

**May 2:**

Sammy is eight years old today. Happy birthday, kiddo. No matter what demons and soothsayers and lunatic albinos say, you're special to me just because you're my son. And I'm never going to let anything happen to you.

Ms. Lyle was after Sammy because he has something she wants. She said he was special. So did Silas. What's different about him? He's just a boy. My boy.

Have started reading about demonology because of Bobby. I still have a hard time believing it. So far I'm sorting through a couple of different books that he says are important

_**A New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Science (OS)**_

_Written by Ebenezer Sibly. Fourth volume in a series begun 1784 and mostly dedicated to astrology. A disciple of Swedenborg and Mesmer. Makes liberal use of Reginald Scot's __Discoverie of Witchcraft__ and Ariggppa's __De Occulta Philopshia._

_**Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (PD)**_

_Written by Johann Weyer, 1563, from a book he calls __Liber offriciorum spiritum, seu Liber dictus Empto Salmonis, de principibus & regibus demoniorum (__note reference to Soloman here and in Weyes' subtitle: "Salomon's Notes of Conjuration") Weyer a student of Agrippa. The __Pseudomonarchia__ has much in common with the first book of the __Lemegeton__, called __Geotia__. A lengthy catalog of demons, with variations on their names, noted on their appearances, and brief instructions on conjuration and abjuration. Translated into English prior to 1584 by Reginald Scot as part of his __Discoverie of Witchcraft__. Full of oddnotes about how many legions each demon controls, etc. Most of this isn't useful, but the characteristics of individual demons shed some light on the quest._

_Goetia__ has better diagrams, and is more useful for actual conjuration._

_**The Testament of Soloman (TS)**_

_Probably written 1__st__ – 4__th__ century C.E. In Soloman's voice, tells of the building of the temple and of the binding of numerous demons to perform menial labor. Several of these demons not attested in other sources. The story goes on to tell how Solomon fell in love with a Jebusaean woman (Shunammite?) and desired her for a wife, but was told by the priests of Moloch that he could not have her unless he sacrificed five grasshoppers to Moloch. In a moment of weakness, he did, and fell away from God, becoming "the sport of idols and demons."_

_One of dozens of texts that characterize Soloman as an arch-magician. Queen of Sheba characterized as a witch, unlike her presentation in the __OT__. Also interesting that the Koran refers to the tradition that Soloman built the Temple with the assistance of bound demons: see sura 221, 23, 34, 38._

_PD__, in its entry on Gaap, says that Soloman wrote a book of conjurations, and "mingled therewithal all the holy names of God."_

**May 17:**

Alysa turns 10 today, and she's starting to pull a fit whenever someone calls her by her full first name. Prefers to go by Aly, instead of Alysa now. Finds Alysa too girly for her and she's a real tom-boy. If only Mary were here, to tell her that just because you have a girly name doesn't mean you have to be girly. She won't listen to me when I say it.

This would have been out thirteenth anniversary. Lace. Eleven is steel, twelve and thirteen are silk and lace? Feels like it should be the other way around, that steel should come later. Or maybe once you've proven you've got the steel to keep a marriage going, then you get to enjoy silk and lace.

I'll never know.

**November 2: **

Mary has been dead for eight years. I've been learning about reapers. There's more than one, and it's not always a hooded skeleton with a scythe, but that's where I'll start. The traditional Grim Reaper is a skeleton or solemn-looking man carrying a scythe, who cuts off people's lives as though he were harvesting grain. Death personified is a figure or fictional character which has existed in mythology and popular culture since the earliest days of storytelling. Because the reality of death has had a substantial influence on the human psyche and the development of civilization as a whole, the personification of Death as a living, sentient entity is a concept that has existed in all known societies since the beginnings of recorded history. In the United States, Death is usually shown as a skeletal figure wearing a midnight-black gown with a hood, while in Europe he is often depicted similarly but dressed in white, which is the traditional color worn at funerals in many places.

_Example of Death personified are:_

_In modern days European-based folklore, Death is known as the Grim Reaper or the Grim Spectre of Death._

_In Islam, Death is portrayed as Azrael, the angel of death (note that the name "Azrael" does not appear in any versions of either the Bible or the Koran)._

_Father time is sometimes said to be Death_

_Psychopomp is a spirit, deity, or other whose task is to conduct the souls of the recently dead into the afterlife._

_In Vgaritic Mot "Death" (spelled mt) is personified as a god of death. The word is cognate with formas meaning `death in other semitic languages: with Hebrew ("moth" or "maveth"); with Canaanite, Egyptian Aramaic, Nabataean, and Palmyrene ("mut"); with Jewish Aramaic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and Samaritan ("mut"); with Syriac "maat"?; with Mandaean "muta"; with Akkadian "m'tu"; with Arabic "maut"; related to Indo-European languages the words for "death" in Sanskrit ("mrit") and Latin ("mortus") are similar._

_Mot (death), son of 'El, according to instructions given by the god Hadad (Ba'al) to his messengers, lives in hmry (Mirey) a pit is his throne and Filth is the land of his heritage. But Ba'al wabs thems:_

_"That you not come near to divine Death, lest me made you like a lamb in his mouth, (and) you both be carried away like a kid in the breach of his windpipe."_

_Hadad seems to be urging that Mot come to his feast and submit himself to Hadad._

_Death sends back a message that his appetite is that of lions in the wilderness, like the longing of dolphins in the sea and he threaten to devour Ba'al himself. In a subsequent passage Death seemingly makes good his threat, or at least is deceived into believing he has slain Ba'al. Num erous gaps in the test make this portion of the tale obscure. Then Ba'al/Hadad's sisters, the warrior goddess 'Anat, comes upon Mot, seizes him, splits him with a blade, winnows him in sieve burns him in a fire, grinds him between millstones, and throws what remains on the field for the birds to devour._

_But after seven years, Death returns seeking vengeance for the splitting, burning, grinding, and winnowing, and demanding one of Ba'al's__ brothers to feed upon. A gap in the text is followed by Mot complaining that Ba'al has given Mot his own brothers to eat, the sons of his mother to consume. A single combar between the two breaks out until Shapsh (Sun) upbraids Mot concedes and the conflicts ends, in __Sanchuniathon__ also Death is son of 'El and counted as a god, as the test says in speaking of 'El/Cronus:_

_…and not long afterward he consecrated after his death another of his sons, called Muth, whom he had by Rhea; this (Muth) the Pheonicians esteem the same as Thanatos ["Death"] and Pluto._

_But earlier in a philosophical creation myth __Sanchuniathon__ has referred to great wind which merged with its parents and that connection was called Eros (desire):_

_From its connection Mot was produced, which some say is mud, and others a putrescence of water compound; and out of this came every germ of creation, and the generation of the universe. So there were certain animals which had no sensation, and out of them grew intelligent animals which were called "Zophasemin," that is "observers of heaven"; and they were formed like the shape of an egg. Also Mot bust forth into light, and sin, and moon, and stars, and the great constellations._

_The language here is confusing, a bad summary and possibly corrupt, and the form "mot" here is not the same as "Muth", which appears later. But it may be that the full and coherent account would have made clear that muddy and putrescent Death is the cource of Life._

_Putting God on Trial – The Biblical Book of Job: A Biblical Reworking of the Combat Motif Between Mot and Ba'al._

**December 25:**

Sometimes I think Sammy's been reading this journal.

But he's not going to read it tonight, because we are, Christmas night, and there's two hundred miles of scrub prairie and desert between me and them. No Christmas tree, no carrots and milk for Santa and the reindeer. A couple of days ago I handed them presents, and they gave me a set of night-vision goggles that Dean or Alysa must have pinched from a gun show we passed through in Amarillo a couple of months ago. They're growing up without me. And they're all starting to act out a little, because we're apart so much. Sam gets resentful and has some trouble handling his temper. Dean tried to fix everything and keep us together as a team. Neither of them should have to do those things. Alysa is the only one that acts out normally and just throws things and pulls tantrums.

After this year…the succubi and Ms. Lyle (Lilith?), Silas…this has been a rough one. They came after my kids. We made it, but they're going to keep coming. This enemy doesn't quit until they're dead, and I don't even know who's sending them. How do I fight them?

And how do I avoid this question: Would the kids be better off somewhere else, with someone else, living normal lives?

No I'm their father. They belong with me.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

**A/N: Hey everyone, sorry I haven't been able to update in awhile. My sister Kaylee was in this hospital after a car crash involving her and our mom and dad. Everyone is fine, but Kaylee needed surgery on her neck. Yikes! This chapter is nice and long. Have fun everyone and once again I am really really sorry that I didn't update sooner.**


	10. 1992

1992

**January 24:**

Dean turns thirteen today. For his birthday we went out to dinner at a greasy spoon called Mama Janer's, in Flint, Michigan. It's freezing and miserable here, and we're headed farther north to check out come things I've been hearing about shape-shifters in the North Woods, from Michigan all the way across through Minnesota. Odd for them to be active this time of year, since there aren't that many people outside for them to prey on. It makes me think something big is happening.

Outside L'Anse, in a roadhouse full of Indians from the lumber camp down the way, I overheard this:

_There was a white woman named Jennie who had an Indian working for her – a shiftless, lazy Sioux. She hated him so much that if he was at the table, she wouldn't sit down, but he bragged down around the docks that he was going to have her. All I have to do, he said, is go into the woods and find the right root, and you'll see. I'll have that Jennie. Well, all of his buddies down at the docks, they made fun of him, but pretty soon he started leaving little candies around the table, and Jennie would eat them when he wasn't around so he wouldn't know she was doing it, and wouldn't you know it, all of a sudden – wasn't but a couple of months later – she up and married him. Then, when he had her in his power, he treated her real bad, almost starved her to death. He worked his bearwalk on one of her relatives, too, and that was enough. They took care of him, and we didn't ever see him around here no more._

**March 30:**

I thought the lesson was learned back in Wisconsin, but the same thing almost happened again. I left the kids next at the beach in Two Lakes State Park and went looking for a skin-walker, and then it was Ichi all over again. Only this time the skin-walker took on the appearance of a park ranger it had killed, and nearly got the kids to come with it because they trusted the uniform. I still can't completely trust them on a hunt. I took it down, and lit into the three of them. Especially Dean and Aly. I have to be hard on them because one of these days I'm not going to be around, and they're the ones who are going to have to look out for their brother. They're badasses, though. I thought I was tough when I thirteen, but Dean and Aly would have kicked my ass six ways to Sunday.

**April 27:**

_Procopius, _Secret History, _on Justinian:_

_And some of those who have been with Justinian at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, have thought they saw a strange demoniac form taking his place. One man said that the Emperor suddenly rose from his throne and walked about, and indeed he was never wont to remain sitting for long, and immediately Justinian's head vanished, while the rest of his body seemed to ebb and flow; whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. But presently he perceived the vanishing head filing out and joining the body again as strangely as it had left it._

_Another said he stood beside the Emperor as he sat, and all of a sudden the face changed into a shapeless mass of flesh, with neither eyebrows nor eyes in their proper places, nor any other distinguishing feature; and after a time the natural appearance of his countenance returned. I write these instances not as one who saw them myself, but heard them from men who were positive they had seen these strange occurrences at the time._

_They also say that a certain monk, very dear to God, at the instance of those who dwelt with him in the desert went to Constantinople to beg for mercy to his neighbours who had been outraged, beyond endurance. And when he arrived there, he forthwith secured an audience with the Emperor; but just as he was about to enter his apartment, he stopped short as his feet were on the threshold, and suddenly stepped backward. Whereupon the eunuch escorting him, and others who were present, importuned him to go ahead. But he answered not a word; like a man who has had a stroke staggered back to his lodging. And when some followed to ask why he acted thus, they say he distinctly declared he saw the King of the Devils sitting on the throne in the palace, and he did not care to meet or ask any favour of him._

**May 2:**

Sammy is nine years old today. Last year on his birthday we were getting the hell out of Albuquerque. This year I nearly lost the kids because of a skin-walker. They're both learning, but they've got a lot still to learn.

**May 11:**

This list is being that can change their shape at will, or who undergo recurrent changes.

_WEREWOLF (loup-garou, rougarou, oboroten, vrykolakas, pricolci, maj-coh): Changed caused by the full moon, or isolation, or brought on by recitation of a spell. Too many variations, and I've never seen one. Never met anyone who has, either. Needs some separate research. Lycaon?_

_VAMPIRE – ask Elkins_

_KITSUNE: Japanese fox spirit, has as many as nine tails to signify its age and wisdom. Can be tricksters, lovers, messengers of Inari. Myobu designates kitsune associated with Inari (kami of rice, colour white); nogitsune are the variety that are untamed, tricksterish, dangerous. After living 1000 years, kitsune acquires its ninth tail along with the ability to see and hear anything happening anywhere in the world. They hate dogs, and the presence of a dog sometimes makes thgem revert when they have assumed human form. Often change appearance to beautiful young women, encountered alone. They will take human lovers, and bear children, but vanish again when their true nature is discovered. Also can appear in dreams. Kitsunetsuki is the term for possession by kitsune, which cause the sufferer to behave like a fox and speak strange languages. Exorcism must take place in a shine to Inari. Kitsune often acrry round balls alight with kitsune-bi, foxfire. A human who gets one of these balls has leverage over the kitsune. As tricksters, kitsune often target pride and greed, taking people downa peg. Sometime they're just malevolent, but this is rare. Most likely to find them in abandoned houses, where they will resist new residents. Korean version known as kumiho, Chinese huli jing. Kumiho generally are evil, eating either human hearts or livers in an effort to consume human essence and become human themselves; less common variant stories have the kumiho becoming human by resisting its urge to kill for a thousand days. Huli jing more ambivalent, like kitune. Emphasis in Chinese tales on possession and seduction._

_TANUKI: Japanese "raccoon dog", can assume any shape an often takes on the appearance of inanimate objects – teakettles, etc. – to play a trick on humans. Largely good-humored, but can turn dangerous as well. Known for the size of their testicales. Very fond of alcohol, and like to play games with merchants by cheating them using disguised leaves as money._

_BOUDA: East African were-hyene, from name of tribe where the power originated. Handed down matrilineally, power also related to more general witchcraft. (witchcraft in Africa often related to blacksmiths…interesting. Think of Ogun and the Colt…)Parallel were-hyena legend is of the Qora. Ethiopian Jews often accused of being bouda. Also numerous legends in Ethipia and Sidan that white – or alibino – people had hyena blood, or could transform into hyenas._

_WERE-JAGUAR: (runa-uturungu in Argentina, also yaguarete-aba; chacmool in Mexico?)_

_SELKIE: Said to be souls of drowned people now inhabiting bodies of seals. Shed their seal skins to come ashoe at prescribed intervals, or when they fall in love. If a human captures the skin, the selkie is in his (or, less often, her) power. Selkies live human lives, have human children…until the discover where their skin has been hidden. Then they seize it and return to the ocean. Some selkies are out to avenge hunting of seals – they are said to curse and sabotage fishermen. Tales come across the North Atlantic, some similar stories in Pacific Northwest. Related stories of swan-maiden (swanmay, dove-girl, peacock maiden), various other animal-wife tales._

_LESZY: Slavic woodland spirit, protector of forests and natural world. Tall men, with beards of grass and vines. Can assume any form, including plants and trees. Known to appear as a ginat talking mushroom, and to keep company with wolves and bears. When in human form, his eyes glow green and his shoes are on the wrong feet. Will enter pacts with peasants or farmers, keeping their cattle or sheep from getting lost, but will also react violently to any perceived threat. Hides axes, leads lumberjacks astray, destroys signs, kidnaps young women, even known to tickle people to death. Leszy can be repelled by wearing clothes inside out or by starting a fire in their forests. Unusual among shape-shifting beings because it has a family: leszachka, wife, and leshoky, children._

_NAGA: Common to Indian and Buddhist myth, nagas are snake spirits. Sometimes take human form to live among humans. More often they live in bodies of water or underground, where the guard treasure. Nagas have influence over natural events, and are offered sacrifices. Worshipped across the South and southeast Asia, from India to Tibet to Cambodia and all the way to Malaysia._

_RAKSHASA: Reincarnated from evil human beings. Raksgasas are powerful shape-changers who may not have a native form. They Also have magical powers, including invisibility. They are cannibalistic and particularly target anything religious or holy. In addition to human flesh, they weill eat spoiled food. Their fingernails are poisonous. In the __Mahabharata,__ some rakshasas who give up cannibalism eventually become allies of humans._

_YUXA: In Tatar folklore, a snake who reaches 100 years of age becomes a yuxa, and will assume the appearance of a young woman to have children, who then become more yuxa._

_TENGU: Spirits of the arrogant or vain, tengu appear as old men and birds. Sometimes they attack those who are the most like they were in life – typically overly proud samurai, priest, nobles. More broadly, they deceive travelers, kidnap children, and lead priests astray. Often their victims are found tied to the tops of trees, sometimes insane. They have strong powers of illusion, and will possess young women in an attempt to seduce priests and monks away from their vows. If the tengu's ientity is guessed or discovered, it has to assume its true form – a large bird, like a kite – and it will flee. Sometimes it can be propitiated with sacrifices. Usually in these cases a tengu has chosen a place to guard or make its home, and intruders who don't observe the proper rites are in for trouble._

_PULA: May appears as a variety of animals, always dark in colour. Most often a horse who will give unexpecting humans a wild ride. Can speak, and if it takes a liking to a person it will give him advice – especially on November 1. Crops left in the fields after this date are considered to belong to it, as it is always hungry. If not fed, its temperament can turn more dangerous._

_EACH UISGE: Usually a horse, can be a young man. As a human, tries to seduce young women. As a horse, it carries its rider into the water before eating the rider, leaving only the liver. If kept away from water, it can be controlled._

_ENCANTADOS: Group of beings from Brazilian lore. Can be snakes or disembodied spirits, but typically used to describe dolphins who can assume form. Encantados cine from another world, have magical abilities related to music and seduction. Like Celtic faeries, they sometimes kidnap children, especially progeny of their human liaisons – but no changeling stories. Encantados are known to drive people mad, but rarely kill outright. Will sometimes force a transmutation of a human into a new encantado to its realm, known as Encante. In human form, they wear hats to cover their blowholes, which do not disappear in the transformation. A magical powder composed of manioc and chile, scattered over the water where the encantado appeared, is aid to break their spell._

_LOKI-TRCIKSTERS: Always can change shape? Ellegua, Coyote. Hell, Bugs Bunny is always dressing up like a woman…_

**May 17:**

This would have been our fourteenth anniversary. Ivory.

Alysa turns eleven today. She's growing up so fast. She's been complaining about getting cramps, I might have to take her to see Ellen, so she can explain everything. Even though I don't think I should step anywhere near the roadhouse, Alysa will need it. Good luck boys, she's going to go medieval on your asses soon enough.

**June 21:**

Last night, Sammy woke up in the middle of the night telling me he was afraid of the thing in the closet. I went and looked. There was nothing in the closet, but I've seen too much not to believe that there could be. So I handed Sammy the .45 and told him the next time he saw the thing in the closet, he knew what to do. I don't think I'll win any awards from parenting organizations, but five nights running now Sammy has slept without nightmares. Sometimes a .45 under your pillow is all you need.

Looks like, I didn't take Alysa to Ellen a moment too soon, cause not even a week later, she got her time of month. The boys not knowing what to do, just treated her normally, well I hope they learned their lessons, she gave each of them a black eye, cause they pissed her off so much. Please boys learn, you won't survive if you don't.

Daniel says vampires can't change their shapes. Says that's all an invention of Bram Stoker.

**November 2: **

Mary has been dead for nine years. Nine years I've been on this quest,a nd I've accumulated so much stuff I needed to rant a storage space for it.

_Omnes angeli, bonu et mali, ex virtute naturali habent potestatem transmutandi corpora nostra.  
All angels, good and bad, have the power of transforming out bodies._

**December 9:**

_It is well known to all, that there is a Certain virtue in the Loadstone, buy which it attracts Iron, and that the Diamond doth by its presence take away that virtue of the Loadstone: so also Amber and jeat rubbed, and warmed draw a straw to them, and the Stone Asbestus being once fired is never, or scarce extinguished: a Carbunle shines in the dark, the Stone Aetites put above the young fruit of Women, or Plants, strengthens them, but being put under, causeth abortion; the Jasper strencheth blood; the little fish Echeneis stops the ships: Rhubard expels choler; the liver of the Camelion burnt, raiseth showers, and thunders. The Stone Heliotrope dazzles the sight, and makes him that wears it to be invisible, the Stone Lyucurius takes away delusions from before the eyes, the perfume of the Stone Lypparis calls forth all the beasts, the Stone Synochitis brings up infernal Ghosts, the Stone Anachitis makes the image of the Gods appear. The Ennecis put under them that dream causeth Oracles.  
- Agrippa_

_Magus: Then there is the pyrophilus, of a red misture, which Albertus Magnus reports that Æsculapius makes mention of in one of his epistles to Octavius Cæsar, saying, "There is a certain poison, so intensely cold, which preserves the heart of man, being taken out, from burning; so that if it be put into the fire for any time, it is turned into a stone, which stone is called pyrochilus."_

**A/N: Here's another chapter. Aly is finally a woman…well not really, but she's just growing up. Those poor boys. Hope everyone enjoys it and my parents and sister thank you all for the well wishes.**


	11. 1993

1993

**January 3:**

Whether Scripture was read, or prayers were said,  
Is more than the writer remembers;  
But it runs in his head, ere the two went to bed,  
They carefully covered the embers.

Yea, even much more – they locked every door  
Upon horses, cows, heifers and stirks;  
The house-doors were barred and the gateways tarred,  
Thus, showing their faith in their works.

What more could be done? Smith loaded his gun  
With powder and ball and with shot;  
"Near the head of my bed I'll have it," he said,  
"And for witches and thieves make it hot."

Gun loaded and cocked and all the doors locked,  
Let witches and thieves do their best,  
Gates bolted and barred, and some even tarred,  
Man and beast might slumber and rest.

_Folk magic among Pennsylvania Butch known as "pow-wow."_

"_Trotter Headm I forbid thee my house and premises; I forbid thee my horse and cow-stable; I forbid thee my bedstead, that thou mayest not breath upon me; breathe into some other housem until thou hast ascended every hill, until thou hast counted every fence-post, and until thou has crossed every water. And thus dear day may come again into my house, in the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen._

Written charm against evil spirits:

I.

N. I. R.

I.

SANLTUS SPIRITUS

I.

N. I. R.

I.

All this be guarded here in time, and there in eternity.

Amen.

**January 24:**

Dean turns fourteen today. He took off to the movies with a girlfriend. I think her name is Katie. Quite the ladykiller, that kid. Like I was at his age. Hell-raising, foul-mouthed, full of piss and vinegar. Silas had it right: he's like me. If I'm not careful with him, by the time he's twenty he'll have left a trail of kids and arrest warrants all over the country.

**April 19:**

_Davidians. Koresh from David and Cyrus. Cyrus the only gentile given the designation "messiah" in the Tanakah. Thomas Jefferson consulted Xenophon's biography of Cyrus when drafting the Declaration of Independence – April 19 also Lexington and Concord. Also birthday of Eliot Ness._

**May 2:**

Sammy is ten years old today. It was a lousy day, for him and me. He's on a soccer team, and he's pretty good, and today was a game day. But it's only a game, and on Saturdays we always do some kind of shooting now that they're all big enough. Today it was bow hunting. Nothing's in season, so were just target shooting, but it's important. They need to know everything, every way to kill the enemy that's out there. For Christ's sake, there are demons after Sammy. He needs to know how to fight them, and Dean and Aly need to know how to protect him. Sammy's a kid, though, and he wants to play soccer. He's even more stubborn than I am when he really decided to dig in his heels. But I'm their father, and we went out with the bows. I can't blame him for wanting a normal life, but I wouldn't be much of a dad if I didn't prepare them for the world they're living in. Doing what's right for your kids doesn't always means doing what they want. Especially in my case.

**May 15:**

Tulpa created through intense ritual visualizations known as dubthab. Variation known as dragpoi dubthab is specifically aimed at creating a thoughtform with the idea of harming another person. Physical form of tulpa becomes apparent to the senses after the mind can begin to sense its spirit prescence. Tulpa thus created, no matter the creator's intent, will graduallt turn on creator.

Evan-Wentz wrote that enlightened magicians can destroy tulpa as easily as create them – also that those masters can incorporate their spiritual being into the body of another person. It's about willpower.

_Determined will is the beginning of all magical operations…It is a because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result that the arts (of magic) are uncertain, while they might be perfectly certain. – Paracelsus_

_Related to atus in the Qliphoth?_

_All things are possible to him that believeth – Mark 9:23_

_Tulpas tge idea behind urban legends? We tell each other stories, and when enough people are concentrating on an idea, or start to believe it, it becomes real…_

**May 17:**

This would have been our fifteenth anniversary. Crystal. Crystal balls, divination, prisms…I want to talk to her so bad. Mary, why don't I dream about you anymore?

Today was Alysa's twelfth birthday. Today when she was opening her presents, they weren't what Dean and I bought for her, but Sam's gift was still the same. I had those gifts wrapped almost two weeks ago, Today when I got them from the car, they were still wrapped the same. I wonder how she did it?

**September 5:**

Written charm carried by King Charles I, written by Pope Leo IX:

_Who that beareth it upon him shall not dread his enemies, to be overcome, nor with no manner of poison be hurt, nor in no need misfortune, nor with no thunder he shall not b smitten nor lightning, or in no fire be burnt soddainly, nor in no water be drowned. Nor he shall not die without shrift, nor with theeves to be taken. Also he shall have no wrong neuther of Lord or Lady. This be in the name of God and Christ..Messias…Sother…Emannell…Saiboath…_

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for ten years. Ten years. Benn thinking about urban legends all year, and about how what happened at our house ten years ago might already be an urban legend in Lawrence, to go with Stull Church and the Eldridge Hotel. I've been a little crazy this past ten years, and on this day somehow it's easier for me to take a step back and look at how crazy I am. Ten years later, I still wake up wanting revenge. But this year I'm thinking about the vision of Mary I saw at Jim's, just a few weeks after she died. Whenever I think about that, I start wondering how I might see her again, talk to her. Truth is, I'm scared to try because of what happened at Jim's – and also because everything I read about séances talks about how dangerous they are, how easy it is for the séance to be a gate for something evil to come along with the spirit you want to contact. So I hold myself back.

Here's irony for you. Today I was reading some old urban legends, and meant to write this one down.

Bloody Mary: Chant "Bloody Mary" three time into a mirror in a dark room and her spirit will appear. Either it will kill you, gouge your eyes out, or mutilate your face. Why the hell would anyone do this? In a couple of variations she will prophesy for you. Other variations say to chant her name thirteen times. Historically, Bloody Mary was a nickname for Mary I of England, who suffered several miscarriages. More recent versions of the origin story say Mary was a witch who was either hanged or burned at the stake – or that she as mangled in a car crash – or that she killed her children, or had them taken from her, and committed suicide. Sometimes these variant stories come with different invocations: "Bloody Mary, I killed your baby" goes with stories in which she is a grieving mother, "I believe in Mary Worth" with the version in which she was wrongfully accused of witchcraft or infanticide, and "Bloody Mary, I have your baby" those in which her children were taken from her.

Divination by mirror has been practiced in nearly all cultures for as long as mirrors have been around. Before that, any reflective surface, especially still water, was used to prophesy or catch a glimpse of the future. Aztecs created tezcatlipoca, "smoking mirrors," out of mercury poured into a bowl. Queen Elizabeth I's court magician, John Dee, prophesied with mirrors. Folklore from various places holds that if you perform a certain ritual while looking in a mirror, you will see your future husband. Eating an apple, brushing your hair, conducting any one of a thousand "wise woman" domestic rituals. A variation on this is looking into a well as sunrise to watch what reflection emerges as the light starts to shine into the well. In many of these stories, the danger is that you might also see some aspect of Death, which means you will die before marrying.

Tradition also hold that at a the moment of death, all of the mirrors in a house should be covered so they don't trap the departing spirit. Ancient Greeks and Indians believed that the reflection contain the soul, and could be captured by water spirits. Various South Pacific (Andaman, Motumotu) and African (Zulu, Basuto) traditions also hold that the soul is in the reflection, and is vulnerable when reflected. Basutos believe crocodiles try to take these souls.

It's bad luck to break mirrors because they're reflections of the soul, but also because they hold the future. That's why the seven years of bad luck. You've broken your future.

**November 28:**

_Variation on Bloody Mary. I heard a hunter from Alabama say that in Camp Hill, on Loveladies Bridge, if you chant Lovelady, Lovelady, I got your baby!" three times, you'lls ee the ghost of a wman who died with her children in a car accident._

_Hookman: Teenagers parked in some lover's lane somewhere, they're about to get things going _(should tell Alysa about his one) _when a news bulletin on the radio warns of an escaped convist with a hook for a hand. The girl suddenly isn't in the mood anymore, and the frustrated boy guns the car away. When they get home, there's a hook hanging from one of the door handles. An alternate version has the boy getting out to investigate, and the girl stays in the all night, hearing strange noises, only to discover in the morning that her boyfriend has been murdered and is hanging from a tree above the car. Sometimes the strange noises are the sound of the dead boyfriend's fingernails scraping on the car roof. There are plenty of real stories of lover's lane murders – Son of Sam, sase in Arksas in 1946, others…story may have originated in Maine as early as the 1920's_

_Vanishing hitchhiker: Outlines of this one are always the same. Late at night, someone picks upa young woman, sometimes a girl. Usually she's wearing white. She asks to be taken home, and doesn't say much else. Then, when the driver arrives at the address she's given, the backseat is empty. When the driver asks the people living there at the address, he is told that the girl he describes died – or was buried – a few years ago near the same stretch of road where he picked her up. Lots of variations_

_The driver, wondering what happens to coat he lent the girl, finds it draped over her tombstone_

_Instead of hearing the story from the family, the driver sees a picture of the girl in the house and realizes what happened_

_The hitchhiker tells the driver something about the future – often in these cases the hitchhiker is a nun_

_The hitchhiker leaves something in the car, typically a scarf or purse_

_History of the vanishing hitchhiker goes back a long way. Joan Petri Klint wrote about a prophetic hitchhiker in Sweden in 1602. She changes beer to malt, acorns, and blood, the prophesies about harvest and war before disappearing. Other variations recorded since – 18__th__-century English ballad called "A Sufflock Wonder", Washington Irving's story "The Lady with the Velvet Collar." Songs by Country Joe McDonald, Dickie Lee, Blackmore's Night, the Country Gentlemen. I remember the Dickie Lee song from the radio when I was a kid. _

**December 25:**

Christmas in Joplin, Missouri. The kids got me a book that they must have stolen from a shop while I was rooting around in the esters shelves. Some other version of me, out there in a world where schoolteachers don't turn into demons, might have been able to raise the kids without having them turn into thieves. But for us, it's a necessary evil. I try to discourage them from taking things we don't need. Anyway, it's an old book on theosophy. All the hunters I know are convinced that Blavatsky was a fraud, but I'll take a look at it. You never know where you're going to find a clue.

**December 31:**

_Witch bottle: Small glass bottle or flask specifically prepared to trap spells or evil spirits. Contents typically included urine, hair, nail clippings, red thread. Larger stoneware vessels known as Bellarmines, after Catholic inquisitor. These were made with bearded faces, à la church gargoyles, intended to scare away evil. Bottles might also contain special earth, sea water, nails or pins, menstrual blood, thorns. Generally buried under the floor in a difficult spot to access – below the hearth or fireplace, sometime threshold._

_Cats sometimes also hidden in walls, also horse skulls. Folklore of both is that they would ward away familiars or see things that humans can't. Powerful wards. Sometimes shoes also used as spell traps, concealed within walls or floors_

_Apotropaid: combating hostile magic, charms._

**A/N: It's been awhile since my last update. Things have been a little crazy since, the accident, and now my younger brother has gotten his big toe broken…then again it really was his fault…he was the one that left his skateboard on the deck…so here is 1993…seeing as it's summer vacation now I'll have time to update more. Enjoy!**


	12. 1994

1994

**January 24:**

Dean turns fifteen today. A week ago he helped me take out a spirit haunting a grocery store owned by an Indian family in Erie, Pennsylvania. It was like any other spirit – you find the remains, you salt, you burn. But also it wasn't. I'm learning that all spirits have some things in common, but it matters who they're haunting. It matters what their traditions were when they were alive. Have been reading about Indian mythology. Gods upon gods, thousands of them, and each of them has attendant monsters and demons. Some of the ones that keep popping up, not so much mythology as folklore, are pishacha and acheri.

Pishacha eat human flesh and are suppose to be the sons of anger. They haunt cemeteries and places where cremations have taken place. They can change their shape, and in some stories they can also become invisible. Sometimes they attack and eat their victims, other times they possess them and drive them insane. I'm reminded of the unnamed demon in the _Testament of Soloman_ who creeps "beside the men who pass along among the tombs, and in untimely season I assume the form of the dead; and if I catch any one, I at once destroy him with my sword. But if I cannot destroy him, I cause him to be possessed with a demon."

Acheri is a demon that disguises itself as a little girl. From Indian folk tradition. Acheri are said to inhabit the mountains and murder travelers who are taken in by its helpless guise. A protection against them is to wear a red thread around the neck (this was also said to protect small children against sorcery in some European countries).

Red thread: Kabbalah? According to the rabbis, there's no mention in the Torah or Talmud about red strings, also no mention in written Kabbalah. But an old folk superstition states that tying a red string around the body is a segulah, a protective act. Some Orthodox Jews tie strings on the cribs of infants to ward off evil spirits or the evil eye. Scholarly Jewish tradition considers the red string a superstition that veers dangerously close to impiety, even idol-worship.

Sefer Yetzirah: Everything derived from the Word, the creation of language, from which come every aspect of physical world. Seven pairs of contrasts:

_There were formed seven double letters, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, Resh, Tau, each of these has two voices either aspirated or softened. These are the foundations of Life, Peace, Riches, Beauty or Reputation, Wisdom, Fruitfulness, and Power. These are double, because their opposites take part in life;opposed to Life is Death; to Peace, War; to Riches, Poverty; to Beauty or Reputation, Deformity or Disrepute; to Wisdom, Ignorance; to Fruitfulness, Sterility; to Power, Slavery._

No good, no evil. The way a man lives his life in relationship to natural and divine order dictates whether he will perceive good or evil.

Tree of life described in Sefer Yetzirah, but more in Zohar – belief among esoteric theologians that it corresponds with Tree of Life mentioned in Genesis. Two versions. Once has 10 Sephirot, 22 connections; the other 11 and 24. Individual characterics of Sephirot and pathways hotly contested.

Above the first Sephirah, Ketter, is the Ayn Sof Aur, the beginning point that no mind can comprehend, but that we need to grant so that these can a beginning point. With Keter, Binah, Chakhmah, time and space begin. These are the Crown, Wisdom and Understanding – rest of creation comes from these.

Tetragrammaton arranged in different ways can be tetraktys, as in Pythagorean mysticism. From tetraktys, quincunx was derived. Pythagoras also always used the pentagram with two points upward – this considered evil by medieval scholars/alchemists/demonologists.

**May 2:**

Sammy is eleven years old today. When Dean turned eleven, he wanted a gun of his own. When Aly turned eleven, she wanted a knife set of her own, to sharpen to perfection. Sammy asked me for a computer. That right there tells you all you need to know about the differences between them I got him his computer, too. A Macintosh Performa. It's in the truck right now, but every time we spend a night under a roof he's going to want it plugged in, I can tell. He was telling me about the Internet today. I'm not sure I understand what he's talking about, but according to Sammy, everything you could ever want to know is on the Internet somewhere, and if you have a computer you can find it. Looks like Team Winchester just took a big leap ahead when it comes to gathering information. Every army needs intelligence. We subscribed to Prodigy, which, according to Sammy, is the best way to get o the World Wide Web. I used one of the credit cards Bobby helped me get.

**May 17:**

This would have been our sixteenth anniversary. No traditional gift, or substance. Except in England, it's tungsten. Tungsten? How is that romantic?

Alysa turned thirteen today, and took off with some friends to hang out at the mall. My little girl is growing up. All I know, is no boys!

**October 31:**

Wicthes known to change into rabbits, cats, other familiar animals. Halloween costumes a surviving remnant of the belief that transformed witches would be abroad before All Hallows' Eve…

_George Gifford, 1608: In good sooth, I may tell it to you as to my friend, when I got but into my closet I am afraid, for I see now and then a hare, which by my conscience giveth me is a witch or some witch's spirit, she stareth so upon me. And-There is a foule great cat sometimes in my barne which I have no liking unto._

_-A Dialogue of Witches and Witchcraft_

_Nahules: Shamans who acquire the power to shape shift. Name is Nahuati (Aztec, originally nahualli in the plural), stories span Aztec, Maya mythologies in descendants – Mixtec, Zapotec, Tzeltal, so on. Each nahual had a tonal, animal aspect related to the day of the nahual's birth. The nahual can assume this shape, but oftem others as well. Some nahual have vampiric qualities , changing into bats or owls to drain blood, in othet cases the nahual is a respected and feared member of a community, relied on to settle disputes. In some places nahuales are said to attack Indians who have too much contact with mestizo or Anglo populations. Montezuma's advisor Nezahaulcoyotl said to be able to change shape, possibly escaped Cortez this way? Tradition persists parallel ro brujeria, which has parallels in both European-style witchcraft and shamanism._

_North American – Mohawk limikkin, "skinwalkers". Navajo version is yenaldooshi, who break taboo to acquire magical powers. This taboo generally said to be murdering a relative. Once this is done, the yenaldooshi can change shape, although he goes in human form ordinary circumstances. He will wear a coyote skin. The yenaldooshi attacks in two ways it sprinkles a toxic powder made from corpses, which causes lingering and ultimately fatal sickness, and it uses a blowgun to shoot a small pellet of bone into the victim's body. This laso causes a sickness that will eventually kill the victim. Yenaldooshi known to move through settlements at night, desecrating religious places._

_Africa-Hausa witches I was telling Jim about a couple of years back. Can change into dogs._

_Possibly related to Abraxas, or Abrasax. Collin de PLancy; "A god in certain Asian theogonies. From his name is derived the medical word Abracadabra. He is represented on amulets as having the head of a cock, the feet of a dragon, and a hwip in his hand. Demonoloists have made him a demon with the head of a king and with serpents for his legs/ The Egyptian Basilides. 2__nd__-sentury hertics, looked upon him as their supreme god. Finding that the seven Greek letters contained in his name amounted to 365, the number of days in the year, they placed at his command several spirits who preside the 365 heavens and to whom they attributed 365 virtues, one for each day. The Basilides also said that Jesus Christ, Our saviour, was but a benevolent spirit sent to earth by Abrasax. " –__Dictionnaire Infernal,__ 1863_

_Basilides a Gnostic sect. Other sources deny connections with VBasilides, suggent Abraxas/Abrsax is a demiurgic figure syncretised from Jewish and other obscure tradition._

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for eleven. Eleven: double 1, said to represent a strand of DNA. Also balance. Prime number. First number you can't count on your hands. Eleventh of the arcana is Justice.

_Revelations 11:11: "And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them." _

**December 11:**

_**Wendigo**_

_Cree: Evil that devours. Half phantom, half man, half beast. Wood spirit, very thing. Cannibal/magic. Eats live flesh. Lives the forests._

_Perfect hunter: heighted senses, speed, strength, power. Enhanced vision, smell. Sunning and insane. Not bound by moral restrictions nor conventional restraints. With superhuman abilities, lives by instincts as an animal. Ferocious, ravenous, evil. Strength of wild animal, freedom to roam forest, hunt for live meat. Eats only living flesh._

Wendigo knows how to fast long winters – hibernates for years at a time- will hunt when necessary. Legends from local lore state that it's hundreds of years old – was once a man, and turned into cannibal, possibly from conditions such as harsh winters cut off from supplies. Miner/hunter/courier DeBois: conditions of isolation & depravity turned him into a monster. Different cultures around the world carry similar legends. Cannibalism endows the consumer with certain powers such as heightened senses, strength, speed, agility.

Desperate, lonely – what price survival? Eats members of his own tribe. Always hungry, alone, numb. Less than human. Can never return, senses gone in normal sense. Wendigos are feared in history – petroglyphs are clear depictions – North American versions: gigantic spirit, over fifteen feet tall, glowing eyes, long yellow fangs, overly long tongue, most have yellowish sallow skin. Some are mattered with hair, lanky, and driven by hunger. Can be male or female, but always hungry. Some versions of the legend have them growing in size with every meal, so there's always more to feed. Others say wendigo has a heart of ice which must he shattered or melted to kill it.

Cannabalism plus magic equals a dark, dark road. I've never seen anything so hungry. Every motion and sound and breath of the wendigo is about hunger. It's stealthy when stalking its prey, blinding fast when pouncing, savage and ravenous when eating

I wish I didn't know about that last part, but you see things in this job.

Algernon Blackwood didn't know the half of it.

**A/N: 1994 done…and up for you all to read. Only 11 more years to cover. Let me know if you want me to continue and re-write the show, so that the sister is in it…..Kaylee is going to lend me her DVDs, but only if I watch them with her…..so everyone let me know and ENJOY!**


	13. 1995

1995

**January 13:**

Verstegan says werewolves "are cartayne sorcerers, who having annoynted their bodies with an ointment which they make by instinct of the devil, and puttint on a certayne inchaunted girdle, does not only unto the view of others seem as wolves, but to their own thinking have both the shape and nature of wolves, so long as they wear the said girdle. And they do dispose themselves as very wolves in worrying and killing, and most of humane creatures." Verstegan hinmts that the werewolf has no conscious memory of its action while it is transformed – "to their own thinking." Other accounts, not Verstegan's, have this hand-in-and with a belief that werewolves can only transform while they are asleep.

_From Virigil:  
_Meoris for me these hearbs [herbs] in Pontus chose,  
And curious drugs, for there great plenty grows;  
I many time, with these, have Moeris spide [spied]  
Chang'd to a wolfe, and in the woods to hide:  
From Sepulchres would souls departed charm,  
And Corn bear standing from anothers Farm.

**January 24:**

Dean turns sixteen today. We're in Montana, and I think we're on the trail of a werewolf. That bow-hunting practice is going to come in handy. Sometimes you can't use a gun, and this is one of them. Alysa is sharpening her knife set, with a murderous look in her eye. I have a feeling she can't wait to tear the werewolf limb from limb. I'd hate to see what happens to the guy that hurts her, especially if she wants to get even with him…

Tomorrow we're going out on a hunt, and I'm going to let Dean take the lead.

**January 25:**

Bull's eye. Dean is a helluva shot with anything. He's coming into his own as a hunter. As is Alysa, she carved that werewolf, and tore it limb from limb, and then burned it.

Werewolves will avoid wolfsbane when they cane, as well as holy artefacts and silver. Being stabbed or cut with silver knife can sometimes force a werewolf to revert to human shape. The silver bullet legend is probably true, but not all hunters believe in it. You hear grumbles around the gathering places. I was at the roadhouse not too long ago and heard three hunters complaining that either they'd done something wrong when they made their silver bullets, or that some werewolves just weren't affected.

Lycanthropy might have a cure. According to some traditions, killing a particular werewolf removes its curse on all those it's bitten – severing the bloodline, in a way.

_He who desires to become an oborot, let him seek in the forest hewn-down tree; let hims tab it with a small copper knife, and walk round the tree repeating the following incantation: _

_On the sea, on the ocean, on the island, on Bujan,  
On the empty pasture gleams the moon, on an ashtock lying  
In a green wood, in a gloomy vale,  
Towards the stock wandereth a shaggy wolf,  
Horned cattle seeking for his sharp white fangs;  
But the wolf enters not the forest,  
Bu the wolf dives not into the shadowy vale,  
Moon, moon, gold-horned moon,  
Check the flight bullets, blunt the hunters' knives,  
Break the shepherds' cudgels,  
Cast the wild fear upon all cattle,  
On men, all creeping things,  
That they may not catch the grey wolf,  
That they may not rend his warm skin!  
My word is binding, more binding than sleep,  
More binding than the promise of a hero!_

_Then he springs thrice over the tree and runs into the forest, transformed into a wolf._

_My master had gone to Capua to sell some old clothes. I seized the opportunity, and persuaded out guest to bear me company about five miles out of town; for he was a soldier, and as bold as death. We set out about cockcrow and the moon shone bright as day, when, coming among some monuments, my man began to converse with the stars, whilst I jogged along singing and counting them. Presently I looked back after him, and saw him strip and lay his clothes by the side of the road. My heart was in my mouth in an instant, I stood like a corpse; when, in a crack, he was turned into a wolf. Don't think I'm joking: I would not tell you a lie for the finest fortune in the world._

_But to continue: after he was turned into a wolf, he set up a howl and made straight for the woods. At first I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels; but at last going to take up his clothes, I found them turned into stone. The sweat streamed from me, and I never expected to get over it. Melissa began to wonder why I walked so late. "Had you come a little sooner," she said, "you might at least have lent us a hand; for a wolf broke into the farm and has butchered all of our cattle; but though he got off, it was no laughing matter for him, for a servant of ours ran him though with a pike. Hearing this I could not close an eye; but as soon as it was daylight, I ran home like a pedlar that has been eased of his pack. Coming to the place where the clothes had been turned into stone, I saw nothing but a pool of blood; and when I got home, I found my soldier lying in bed, like an ox in a stall, and a surgeon dressing his neck. I saw at once that he was a fellow who could change his skin, and never after he could I eat bread with him, no, not if you would have killed me. Those who would have taken a different view of the case are welcome to their opinion; if I tell you a lie, may your genii confound me!_

_From an old edition of __Satyricon_

_New World Visions. Loup-garou known in Canada and places where French settled in U.S. Loup-garou legends from pre-colonial Illinois: after the initial transformation, a loup-garou was doomed to spend 101 days of nightly transformation, followed by days of melancholia and sickness. The only way to get out of the sentence early was if someone managedto draw blood from the loup-garou and in this cae, neither party involved would speak of the incident until the remainder of the 101 days had passed. _

_Variations called rougarou known in southern U.S. – in some versions said to be a crocodile after transformation, rather than a wolf. Crocodile transformation also known in Egypt and Indonesia. Often New World versions are said to become werewolves because of isolation and failure to observe religious practice, or because of some broken taboo. Cannibalism? One of the earliest werewolf legends is the story of Lycaon, transformed into a wolf after eating human flesh and trying to serve it to Zeus. Herdotus and Pliny also told of people turned into wolves. In the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar said to imagine himself as a wolf. _

_Throwing a piece of iron over a transformed werewolf is said to force it back into its human shape. Related to belief that faeries can't touch iron? _

**April 20:**

Going to Oklahoma City. More than two people involved? Word already out among hunters that McVeigh had some questionable associates. Possible Supernatural angle. Sightings in the area in days before explosion. Daniel says he's heard something about freak weather. 35 degreess 28' N 97 degrees 32' W

**May 2:**

Sammy is twelve years old today. He's a handful. Spends all day of his time on the computer unless he's arguing with me. I can't understand him, and he doesn't even try to understand me. Typical father-son trouble, but it feels worse because neither one of us can talk about what happened to his mother. He wants to me in one pleace, live a normal life. The older he gets, the more he wants it. But the older he gets, the more I'm going to need him to help on the hunt. He's got to understand that. We will finish this quest and he's going to be part of it.

_Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegaories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the sealof all the sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh ir Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvellous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception of all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed  
- Eliphas Levi, introduction to Digme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_

**May 17:**

My little girl, isn't so little anymore. She turns fourteen today and she didn't even want to spend it with the three of us. She wanted to go to Bobby's and have a birthday party with all the hunters that we have met over the years. We met Caleb's son, Scott, today. I DO NOT LIKE THAT KID.

This would have been out seventeenth anniversary. If we'd been British, turquoise. But Americans don't believe in seventeenth anniversaries, I guess. And I never got to have one. Turquoise carvings placed in Native American graves to attract good spirits and guard the grave. Also, turquoise tied to a bow was supposed to make you shoot more accurately.

_Levi: Superstition is the sign surviving the thought; it is the dead body of a religious rite."  
Gold…Au  
Silver…Ag  
Iron…Fe  
Mercury…Hg  
Tin…Sn  
Copper…Cu  
Lead…Pb  
Right mixture of the seven gives Electrum, per alchemists_

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for twelve years. Biblical necromancy, from II Samuel:

_7. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and enquire her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor._

_8. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee._

_9. And the woman said into him, Behold thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and thw wizardsm out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die?_

_10. And Saul sware to by the LORD, saying as the LORD liveth, there shall be no punishment happen to thee for this thing._

_11. Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel._

_12. And when the woman said Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying Why hast thou deceived me? For thou art Saul._

_13. And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth._

_14. And he said unto her, what form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul precieved that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself._

_15. And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou myest make known unto me what I shall do._

_16. Then said Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the LORD is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy?_

_Deutronomy 18 also warns against divination from the dead. Widely practiced in the ancient Near east – Persia, Babylonia, Chaldea. King Herod also thought that Jesus was John the Baptist brought back to life by necromancers._

_THE MAGUS, FRANCIS BARRETT  
Hence it is that the souls of the dead are not to be called without blood or by the application of some part of their relict body. In the raising therefore of these shadows, we are to perfume with new blood the bones of the dead, and with the flesh, eggs, milk, honey and oil, which furnish the soul with a medium apt ro receive its body._

_It is likewise to be understood, those who are desirous to raise any souls of the dead, ought to be select those places wherein these kind of souls are most known to be conversant; or by some alliance alluring the souls into their forsaken bodies, or by some kind of affection in times past impressed in them in their life, drawing the souls to certain places, things or persons; or by the forcible nature of some place fitted and prepared to purge or punish these souls; which places for the most part are to be known by the appearance of visions, nightly incursions and apparitions._

_Therefore the places most fitting for these things are church-ayrds. And better than them are those places devoted to the executions of criminal judgements; and better than these are those places where, of late years, there have been so great and so many public slaughters of men; and that place is still better than those where some dead carcass that came by violent death is not yet expiated, nor was lately buried; for the expiation of those places is likewise a holy rite duly to be adhibited to the burial of the bodies , and often prohibits the soul returning to its body, and expels the same afar off to the place of judgment._

_Oil, from Exodus 30: Olive oil infused with cinnamon, calamus, cassia and myrrh.  
Cinnamon: control  
Calamus: binding other elements  
Cassia: curative, protective  
Myrrh: purification._

_Oil of Abramelin: infused with cinnamon, myrrh and galangal._

_Galabanum Oil: in Liber Juratus - angels_

**November 13:**

Sammy's soccer team won a division championship. On to the state playoffs. I'm proud as hell of him, and I'm sad too. He's battling to keep himself together the only way he knows how – by rebelling. Only because he's Sammy, he rebels toward being normal. I get it, even if I can't let it keep happening. We owe Mary to much to give up now. But I'm goig to keep this trophy.

Alysa and Dean, are beginning to fight more than usual. I suspect, Alysa's constent communication with Scott, is the problem.

**December 1:**

Alysa is dating Scott. My baby girl has a boyfriend. Dean and her fighting still. She's locked him out of the motel more than once now and just ignores me when I try and talk her out of dating a hunter's son or she'll just turn around and scream at me, that she's the daughter of a hunter, what does it matter. Her dating that boy is getting on my last nerve.

_Qliphoth originally described as that which sperates the human from the divine design in the Tree of Life…or worldly residue of once-holy sparks of divine being. Later seen as evil or fallen versions of sephirot, or as necessary result of Adam and Eve eating of the Tree of Knowledge, creating an imbalance in the universe that was resorted be creation of qliphoth. Diagrams expanded to incorporate ideas from medieval demonology. Qliphoth sometimes characterized as coming into being whenever sin or evil occurs and manifesting as misfortune, disaster or demonic entities._

_Babylonian Talmud counts the number of deamson as 7 405 926? Figure from weir, Pseudomnoarchia Daemonum. 1111x 6666. Doesn't dvide evenly into 666. Or 616._

* * *

**A/N: 1995 done…and up for you all to read. Only 10 more years to cover and 93 more pages to rewrite….Still waiting to hear from some of my other readers, if they want me to continue with Aly, with the show and everything.**

**I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever. I ended up graduation high school, going on to University and getting engaged. Wedding plans came up and then the wedding of course. I am so sorry. I'll hopefully have more time to update now. **


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